Sawdust fills the air and nail guns echo off the walls of the newest homes under construction at West Lake Grove on a bright afternoon in Lake Oswego.
Eight Habitat homebuyers took part in a community build in October, as a way to meet their neighbors and learn new skills. From photos, it may be easy to simply see walls being framed. But for Teri, this community is much more than her future home.
It’s the stability she always dreamed of.
Aiming for stability
Teri has always wanted to give her children the security she did not have growing up. For her, that means homeownership.
Teri knows the unpredictability of renting firsthand. When she was growing up, Teri’s father lost his business and the family lost their home, so they had to move between rentals often. Teri didn’t want her kids to know that feeling.
In 2022, Teri was sharing a home with her then-husband and their four kids. He inherited the home from his late mother, and the couple had lived in it for a decade. Teri felt like she had finally built a permanent foundation for her family.
Changing course
When Teri unexpectedly received divorce papers that winter, her sense of stability was gone. Her ex-husband took the house, which Teri learned he kept in his mother’s name, giving Teri no legal claim to it.
Suddenly Teri had to scramble to find housing for herself and her kids.
“Owning a home was my dream, and I thought that I had done it. And I realized that it still wasn’t mine,” she says.
“We had a big, beautiful house. So, to go from that to being poor was triggering, because it was very reminiscent of my childhood.”
Navigating new territory
“I was in such a panic,” Teri says, working hard to figure out how to support her children as a newly single mother.
Teri loves her role as an educational assistant for elementary-school children with special needs, but it doesn’t comfortably support a family of four. “I love it, but it’s a very low paying job,” she says.
Luckily, she was able to stay with her extended family for the following year.
“My aunt and uncle honestly saved my life,” she says. While Teri appreciates her support system, this wasn’t the life she wanted for her kids.
At the time, Teri’s oldest son Jack was 16, Jeremiah was 14, Oliver was 11, and her daughter Sam was just 10. They made do with the shared space, but it felt cramped.
“They all squished on air mattresses,” Teri says. She knew this was only a temporary solution.
Searching for a stable home
So, Teri emailed Habitat looking for help. She explained her situation and asked how she could get a home for her family.
She says they wrote her a “very sweet email” back explaining the application process, and she applied for a home as soon as she could.
It took two rounds of applications for Teri to get the home she wanted. But as usual, she didn’t give up.
Finally, in August, Teri got approved for a home at West Lake Grove.
A long time coming
“When I was told I got it, I screamed. I felt so bad for the lady on the phone,” Teri laughs.
She was so excited to start her journey that she showed up 45 minutes early to her first homebuyer meeting. She found out she had qualified for a four-bedroom home at the meeting and couldn’t wait to tell her kids.
“I came home, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s four bedrooms. You guys are gonna have your own rooms.”
Looking forward to a fresh start
Teri’s family currently lives in a three-bedroom rent-subsidized apartment building that she found in 2023.
While this apartment gives the family more room than they had at her aunt and uncle’s, Teri still wants to give her kids something permanent.
Now that she is building her family’s future at West Lake Grove, she can.
After school, the family loves to pick out furniture online for their future home together. Sam is already excited to host her first sleepover, and Oliver is busy thinking of how to decorate his new room. Jeremiah is excited to have a room of his own again.
Teri is thinking of going back to school once she settles into her future home. Meanwhile, she is excited for her kids to attend great schools in their new community, to meet her new neighbors, and to be closer to her brother who lives in Sherwood.
Building stability by hand
“There is nothing like security,” Teri says. “It’s just such a sense of peace. No matter what happens, I have this, and you have this, and you can always come back to this.”
Teri is grateful to have a home that will remain affordable for generations. Born and raised in the Portland area, she has watched as the housing crisis has made homeownership more and more unattainable to working people like her.
“Lots of neighborhoods have really bloomed, and they’re gorgeous. I just wish they were more accessible for the average Joe,” she says.
Now, she is thrilled to achieve her dream of homeownership on her own terms.
“I wanted a home that no one could ever take away from me,” Teri says.
As she meets her future neighbors and learns to use power tools while building her new community, she is not only attaining stability — she is building it by hand.
With that stability comes hope for the future.
“That hope for something brighter and bigger and new is huge.”
