Originally posted: OCT 14, 2015
On September 12, DC Habitat staff, AmeriCorps, volunteers, and sponsors came together for a special home dedication ceremony in Northeast DC. We celebrated the completion of our third phase of development in the once-blighted Ivy City community.
Eleven new homes – including six built to the highly efficient Passive House standard – will become homes to low-income Habitat partner families. These first-time homebuyers, who invested their own sweat equity into building the homes, participated in a ribbon-cutting to commemorate the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. Among the homebuyers are Andrea Morgan, a single mother of two children who previously lived in a cramped apartment, and Aselefech Gebrie and Yenealem Sata, who lived with their three children in a one-bedroom apartment that allowed no privacy and made doing school work incredibly difficult. During the ceremony, members of these families expressed how owning their own homes with more space will make a big difference for their families and allow their children to grow up in a more positive environment.
Also in attendance were many of DC Habitat’s strongest supporters, including DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, DHCD Director Polly Donaldson and executives from sponsor organizations PenFed, Wells Fargo, National Geographic Society and the Rotary Club of DC. Mayor Bowser spoke on the impact of providing safe, stable homes for DC families through affordable housing programs and the certainty having a home provides for a family’s future.
Speaking on her own experience growing up in a stable home, Mayor Bowser said, “that allowed me to dream big, risk a lot and always be able to go home to my piece of the American Dream, and that’s what we’ll celebrate here today.”
DC Habitat began building in Ivy City in the fall of 2010, during the Jimmy & Rosalyn Carter Project. With the completion of phase 3, DC Habitat has built and renovated 30 affordable homes in the neighborhood for purchase by low-income, working families.
“I was inspired by my kids to follow my dream to become a homeowner,” said new homeowner Andrea Morgan. “I have provided a place for them to call their own. This is a way for me to show everyone – better than I can tell them – that greater things are to come.”
Watch Mayor Bowser speak in Ivy City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD3Qh9UU6tM