On a rainy Friday afternoon in the midst of Mardi Gras season, Latoya Lee’s family gathered to celebrate the closing of her new Habitat house. The kids were dressed in uniforms to march in the parades later and family members battled the traffic to get to the dedication, but the excitement over Mardi Gras was eclipsed by the enthusiasm for the Lee family’s new home: a home they could come back to after the parades were over that night, a home that no one could take away from them, that no landlord could decide to suddenly sell, a home that Latoya Lee worked hard for.
Most of our homeowners pace themselves through the homeownership program, working their sweat equity a few hours per month. Latoya instead got 211 done in a single month! Always a dedicated worker in her job and as a single mother of three, Latoya worked as hard as she could to achieve her dream of homeownership.
As she and her family were presented with gifts of bread, wine, and flowers, she and her family’s faces beamed with well-deserved pride. When they received the ceremonial key, her two youngest sons playfully fought over it. Though the key was purely for decoration and would not actually open the house, the hope for the future and accomplishment it represented were very real.