Two more families receive Habitat homes
Habitat for Humanity held a dedication for two completed homes last Saturday, only the second multiple-dwelling dedication in its eight years in Warren County.
The organization presented the keys to its 14th and 15th homes, located at 214 and 218 Mt. Leo Heights, to two lucky new homeowners and their children.
One of the homes will be occupied by single father Richard (Rich) Wheeler and children James, Seth and Elizabeth (Lizzy) Smith and Joe Marshall. Wheeler lost his wife, the children’s mother, two years ago and he is raising the family. He is a mechanic with a shop on Sparta Street.
Kristian Goff and her daughters Kala, Jordin and Chase Milanovich, will be living in the second home. Goff is currently attending Motlow in addition to holding down a job to support her family.
Both new homeowners became a bit teary eyed as they expressed their gratitude.
‘I’m very much appreciative,’ Wheeler said. ‘I know that my late wife would love it. This was her dream, to have a nice home for the children.’
‘I want to thank everyone who had anything to do with this,’ said Goff. ‘This is wonderful, and I don’t know how to thank you all enough.’
Habitat doesn’t usually undertake multiple projects, but according to Kay Ramsey, who has been with the program from the beginning in 1999, it just made good sense to build these homes at the same time, particularly since they were being built on lots right next door to each other.
‘These are some of the lots that the city gave us,’ Ramsey said. ‘So we decided it was a good opportunity to build them. We started one on March 1, and the other a couple of weeks later, and we just worked them side by side.’
Ramsey said, as usual, the number of volunteers participating in the projects has been amazing.
‘I think we had about 33 different church groups that came this year,’ Ramsey said. ‘Plus I don’t know how many kids from the high school. We had tremendous support from the youth this year.’
Contrary to what some might think, the Habitat homes are not given to the families outright, they have to purchase them like any other homeowner.
‘This is meant to be a hand up, not a hand out,’ Ramsey said. ‘We look for families that meet three qualifications. The need for housing, and that can be because they are living in inadequate housing, or it’s overcrowded, or their rent is way out of proportion to their income. We look for people who are willing to help us build the home. We’re looking for them to put in 400 to 500 hours of ‘sweat equity.’ And then we look for people who will be able to make the house payment.’
The benefit here is that through the Habitat program, the families are able to finance the homes with an affordable payment schedule.
‘The families do have to pay for the materials that go into the house,’ Ramsey said, ‘but the labor is, for the most part, volunteer. Then Habitat finances it over 20 years at zero interest. So it’s a really good deal. Most of the payments run between $260 to $300 a month, depending on the size. Four bedroom homes can run a bit more.’
McMinnville Mayor Royce Davenport was on hand for the dedication, and talked about why the city donated the lots for the homes, one of which had a burned out house on it, which was cleaned up and used to build one of the new dwellings.
‘This looks great,’ Davenport said. ‘This is another win-win situation where we had some property that belonged to the city that we didn’t have any purposeful use for, and by giving it to Habitat, they’ve made it into a very useful location, helped the appearance of the community, and added to the tax base for the city and county government.’