For the past six years, future Habitat homebuyer Liz said she’s been digging herself out of a hole. Her two daughters have watched as she made a new life for their family as a single mom. Sometimes, she said, she feared her girls would look at her and only see the struggle.
“With inflation and housing prices, it feels like all you’re going to be doing is working,” said Liz, who works in quality assurance in the medical industry. “… You feel like your kids will look at you and see a forever struggle.”
But she said that all changed when she was approved to purchase a new, energy-efficient home with an affordable mortgage through Habitat for Humanity Greater Orlando & Osceola County.
“Being approved has been a dream come true for me. I honestly tear up every time I talk about it,” she said. “It feels like a message of hope and encouragement for my entire family.”
All the years she spent building a new foundation for her and her daughters, she said, finally felt worth it.
Since her divorce in 2018, when Liz had to sell the home she owned with her ex-husband, Liz and her girls, now ages 13 and 9, have lived in the same apartment. In that time, they’ve dealt with mice, roaches and water leaks – and rapidly increasing rent.
“My house felt like chaos,” she said.
It’s hard to put down roots for your family, she said, when you’re constantly in fear of something else breaking and of your rent being raised above what you can afford.
Light at the end of the tunnel
But now that she’s months away from closing on the purchase of her Habitat home, she said she can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
She and her daughters go out to the Orange County lot where her home is being constructed every week to check on the progress. They watched it go from just a slab of foundation, to now a nearly finished home.
“It feels like a dream every time I go out to the property and see the progress,” Liz said.
Liz said she’s grateful to the staff, volunteers and fellow homebuyers who have helped physically build her future house, and to Orlando Magic for sponsoring her home. She is looking forward to the Home Dedication this November and attending a Magic game as a guest of honor in December.
“Thank you so much for everything you do for Habitat and for these families. It’s life changing,” Liz said. “It’s going to be an amazing experience for me and my kids and something we’re going to remember for the rest of our lives.”
Making a house a home
Her oldest daughter has big plans to decorate her room with a Hello Kitty theme. And her younger daughter tagged along to help pick out the colors of the cabinets and countertops. “I want her to be able to see that this is what it’s like and that she’s a part of this journey,” Liz said.
Liz said she wants her daughters to see that all the work she put in and the obstacles they overcame are worth it in the end.
“I want them to see if you keep working really hard and you do everything you can, and ask for help and accept help, you can get there. It’s not an impossible journey,” she said.
Her greatest comfort is knowing that her girls won’t have to struggle as much as she did to have a stable place that they can always call home, a testament to housing’s role as the cornerstone of community progress.
“They’ll have a step above what I had; a safe affordable place to call home to get on their feet. And down the line, they can take it over,” she said. “They won’t be struggling from the bottom like I was.”
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