Family builds Ashland home with partners

Habitat/USDA program aids rural poor

By Katherine Calos, Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

The first Virginia collaboration between Habitat for Humanity and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program has produced a home in Ashland for the family of Brenda Williams and a plaque proclaiming them Homeowner of the Year.

Williams, 60, and her son Jesse Williams, 21, who graduates next week from ITT Technical Institute with a graphics design degree, will share the home on Ashcake Road with her father, Robert Woods, 85, who's in a wheelchair because of complications of diabetes. Woods was not well enough to attend the award celebration Friday at the just-completed home.

Williams wiped away tears as she talked about how much she appreciated the honor and the home. A first-time homebuyer, she said she had worked in farming and greenhouse sales with her parents. After her mother died, she took housekeeping jobs and helped her father, but "that was the end of having enough money for a house".

Rural Development helped more than 3,700 Virginians buy homes last year, said Ellen Matthews Davis, state director. She said the partnership with Habitat for Humanity is "a marriage between the ultimate bureaucrats and the ultimate do-gooders, protecting the American dream."

The program helps people who "couldn't go to a bank and get a loan. They can get that through us, and with Habitat, they can build a house," she said. The two groups are talking about working together on infrastructure as well to build rural communities in partnership, she added.

The Ashland house is certified as an EarthCraft energy-efficient house. Hundreds of people, including college students on spring break, volunteered to help build it. Williams also put in 200 hours in "sweat equity" in addition to qualifying for her Rural Development loan. The house was sold to her for $126,000, the cost of building it, and was appraised at $175,000, said Tim Bowring, Executive Director of Hanover Habitat.

From Habitat's perspective, the partnership with Rural Development helps with cash flow, Bowring said.

"Raising money for any nonprofit is difficult in this economy," he said. "We can go to them and say we have this piece of land, these plans for this house. This is what we think it will cost. Will you fund this for this family?"

"It's a wonderful, wonderful way to get a very deserving family - that never could afford to get a house - into a house."

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For more info Hanover Habitat for Humanity (804) 569-6108.
USDA Rural Development (804) 287-1612 or www.rurdev.usda.gov/va