“Welcome to your new home.”
Walking through her light-filled Habitat home, Lucia says the words she’s dreamed of for years. For most of the last decade, she has put everything she has into buying a home for her family — researching programs, building credit, and saving.
Now, as she shows her daughter and mother their new home for the first time, she has made everyone’s dream come true.
“I could be paying a mortgage with this money.”
Lucia wanted stability, wanted freedom from the skyrocketing cost of rent that made it hard to afford daily life. Her rent climbed from $500 to $1,500 over the twenty-plus years she has lived in the Portland area. She moved her family every year or two for lower rent and safer neighborhoods, but the unsustainable cost of living followed her. Somewhere along the way, she decided it was time for a change.
“I just kept thinking, ‘I could be paying a mortgage with this money’” she recalls. She wanted to invest in her family’s future instead of watching her money “going down the drain.”
But when she looked at market-rate homes, she saw barriers rather than opportunity.
“I would look at homes on real estate websites, and they would ask for a 20% down payment on a $500,000 home. I was like, ‘When am I going to be able to afford that?”
So, she researched, found Habitat for Humanity Portland Region, and started saving immediately. The road wasn’t always easy, she says, but it was worth it.
How do you build savings to buy a home when rent is unaffordable?
“I decided to move to an RV to save money for the down payment,” she recalls. “We struggled a little bit because we downsized so much. But it was worth it.”
Her family lived in their RV for three years before moving to the one-bedroom apartment that they have shared for the past year. Though they made it work, space was limited. She shared a bedroom with her teenage daughter while her mother slept in the living room.
Lucia’s work schedule made it especially hard to move through their space without waking up her family — she works the night shift at a Providence care facility and is up at all hours.
“It wasn’t too bad, but we didn’t have space,” she says. “It just felt like we were packed into our little apartment.”
“Am I dreaming?”
That’s what Lucia asked herself when she found out she had been accepted into Habitat’s homeownership program.
“I was sleeping when they called me, and I have really vivid dreams,” she laughs. “For a minute there, I was like, ‘Am I dreaming?’”
Now, there are no questions. Lucia and her family moved into their three-bed, two-and-a-half-bath home in October and are settling into their new reality. Their new home feels spacious, with separate bathrooms and a living space that stands apart from everyone’s bedrooms — meaning no more late-night wake-up calls.
“It feels good to be able to eat in peace,” Lucia says.
“My mom is super happy to have her own room and bathroom,” Lucia laughs. “She’s excited to not find hair in the shower. She’s always complaining about it, and now she doesn’t have to see it.”
Even better than the daily convenience, she says, is knowing her family will have a stable future.
“It’s great knowing that this is my house, where we’re going to grow old together. My daughter will inherit this, and she’ll have affordable housing thanks to this program. I don’t have to worry about her struggling to pay rent when she’s older.”
“It just feels great, giving them a home,” she says.
