Habitat home is where the heart is

STAUNTON — For April Clark, the Habitat for Humanity home she will help build and, by November, live in, will provide her ailing mother and two daughters with a stability they haven’t had since 1998 — the year her stepfather passed away.
Married at the time, Clark and her now ex-husband bought a house in need of substantial renovations. However, four days before her daughter, Alison, was born, the two separated, and now are divorced.
Out of work for three months after her daughter was born, Clark said she was playing catch-up, to the point where she said she had to choose between paying the mortgage, keeping her kids warm and making repairs to the house. After the bank foreclosed on her house, the family, she said, moved into an even more expensive home.
But after an ex-sister-in-law received a house through Habitat, Clark got involved in the program, first helping to build that house, then applying to receive a house of her own.
For about two months, Clark has been helping to put up cinderblock on the three-bedroom home – part of a duplex just outside the city limits in what is known as the Blackburn Addition, which will be shared with another Habitat family. The home will also come with an unfinished basement.
During a First Nail House ceremony Saturday, Clark, using her left hand to hold the hammer, drove the ceremonial first nail into the supporting wall framing. Her daughter, Brittany, followed suit.
As part of the project, Clark and her family will put at least 500 hours of sweat equity – part of the requirement for owning a Habitat home — and then pay a modest mortgage, which comes interest free and averages less than $350 per month.
Rhonda Howdyshell, executive director of the Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro Habitat for Humanity, said the chapter is building another duplex in Waynesboro. Between the two duplexes, Howdyshell said four families would receive Habitat homes this year, with another six families on a waiting list.
By next year, Howdyshell said the local chapter expects to build its 50th home.
Howdyshell said affordable, and available, land is Habitat’s critical need in its effort to help those in need in the community. She said it costs between $24,000 and $34,000 for a building lot.
“The housing for families and those who work in our community is not available,” Howdyshell said.
As with many other Habitat endeavors nationwide, Thrivant Builds is the financial sponsor for the Staunton project.
Following a pause for the ceremony, in which Bethany Trinity Lutheran Church Pastor Tim Bohlmann offered an invocation, scripture and benediction, Clark, along with more than two-dozen volunteers, went back to work.
“Knowing that they really don’t know me, it’s neat, because you really see how people care about the families that really don’t have a lot that they can do with,” Clark said.