The coronavirus pandemic has changed everything about the world as we knew it.

Families continue to cope with the loss of loved ones, of jobs, of stability. Many have deep feelings of uncertainty, of not knowing — for the very first time in their lives — if they will make ends meet. For many others, these feelings aren’t new. 

Although millions live in the chaos of housing instability and economic insecurity, it’s not always visible. People in survival mode develop extraordinary skills to mask their true circumstances. This was the story for much of my life.

My family averted housing insecurity during my childhood only through the generosity of extended family. In my youth, economic insecurity flooded lives in my small town when factories collapsed and fathers, like my own, lost their jobs.

Later, during university, my world spun out of control. The trauma of an assault took a heavy toll. From the outside looking in, you might have seen a smart, sensible and independent young woman, but you would have missed how precarious life was. Suddenly nothing in my life felt safe. Not my home, my school or my job.

I sought escape. I couch surfed. I rebuilt my life in small steps. In my mid-twenties, a miracle happened — the birth of my daughter, a beautiful little girl. She changed everything.

I dared to dream of a bigger world again, one where I could give my child a safe place to live, a space where she could grow into all of her possibilities. But any seemingly small change for us would have caused a devastating domino effect of more misfortune. An illness, say, that led to unpaid time off and unexpected medical expenses. Today, in this new COVID-19 reality, there’s even deeper instability, the kind that threatens families’ abilities to survive and the next generation’s ability to thrive in the future.

As a young mom, my path was not smooth. I knew housing insecurity, but I know now that I never fully understood how much it was impacting every area of my life. It wasn’t until I joined Habitat for Humanity Brant-Norfolk and got to know homeowners that I realized their current struggles were once my own. Overcrowding, dishonest landlords, substandard living conditions, high rents, violent neighborhoods — all hurdles that can threaten your own well-being and the well-being of those you love and care for. All distraction from being fully present whether with family, at work or in your community.

Now, years later, back in the small town of my childhood, I’ve come full circle. I’m finally able to step back and see the full role that substandard housing plays — even in my own story — in keeping people down and the role that decent housing can play in lifting people up. As Habitat Brant-Norfolk’s director of communications and fund development, I’m able to draw on my own experiences to help families find their footing.

I never planned to work for Habitat, and I certainly never planned to reveal my own story. But here I am. Asking others to trust us with their story seems very unfair, if I’m not willing to tell my own. So now, I have a request.

As you move forward into this newly changed world, I ask that you remember your own moments of instability. That you never forget the times your home served as your refuge – the only place where you could shield yourself from the outside world and its threats. 

And know that for many others home continues to be a place to escape from, not run to. For so many, volatility is daily life.

We need to not only remember and know this — we need to act.

Habitat’s path to homeownership can alleviate the constant burden that unaffordable and unsafe housing places on a family. It can literally be solid ground, a place for families to step into who they are and achieve the stability to lift others up — and stand alongside them. Through Habitat, even during a pandemic, we can invest in a solution as we partner with families to build resilience to weather hard times.

Just as stable housing did for me.

The line of cars stretched for blocks. While most of Culver City, California, was staying home and socially distancing as a result of COVID-19, Habitat for Humanity Greater Los Angeles supporters still wanted to find a way to welcome their newest neighbors—even if that meant doing so from at least 6 feet away.

A parade of honking cars drove past Kaoru and her children as they waved from the front porch of the home they had helped build. Before COVID-19, Kaoru and her four sons — Ryan, Trenton, Mason and Kendall — had planned to celebrate moving into their new home with a backyard party for the donors and volunteers who had worked alongside them. Instead, they embraced this adapted celebration. “The community has supported us every step of the way,” says 21-year-old Mason. “They mean so much to us.”

The home — with wider hallways and accessible bathroom fixtures — will allow Kendall, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, to have more freedom of movement and to be more independent. The 18-year-old contributed sweat equity hours to the home’s construction — painting, sanding and picking up loose nails on the site with the help of a magnetic dragnet attached to the back of his wheelchair.

“It’s inspiring to know that I helped build our own home and an amazing opportunity to get to know the people who helped us,” he says. “I can’t put it into words how excited we are for this new house, and this new journey we’re on.”

In her family’s previous rental, Ingrid could always tell the exact moment her 4-year-old son, Ishmael, fell asleep each night.

His little lungs, laboring from the irritants like a neighbor’s cigarette smoke hanging in the air at their apartment complex, would rumble “like an old truck” with every breath. Ingrid restocked and lined up medications and nebulizers every day so that they would be ready as soon as Ishmael came home from school.

“Our surroundings triggered his asthma so bad. His breathing was so rough, so hard,” Ingrid says. “I wanted to move, but to find something affordable was impossible.” She and her husband, Jean, decided that their family of four, including Ishmael and his twin sister Isabella, would move into a studio apartment — the only size they could afford — so that her children’s health would no longer be harmed by their home. “I told my husband that I’ll sleep on the floor,” she recalls. “I’ll do anything, as long as my kids are OK.”

A prayer answered

They were in the process of searching for a smaller but healthier apartment when Jean and Ingrid received a call from New York’s Habitat for Humanity of Rockland County. After two years of patiently waiting, the family’s homeownership application had been approved. Ingrid shouted for joy — accidentally waking her daughter from her nap — at the immediate rush of excitement and of relief. A second call later that evening made the news bittersweet.

“My father was praying morning and night that God would give me a place, especially after I had my kids,” says Ingrid. “The day that I got the news that I would become a homeowner, that’s the day my brother called letting me know my father died.”

Ingrid worked through her grief, pouring her time and energy into the renovation of a 1906 house that was donated to Habitat — her family’s future home. The 200 sweat equity hours that Habitat Rockland County requires of future homeowners came and went quickly for her. By the end of the process, Ingrid had accrued more than 400 total hours working, and healing, beside Habitat staff and volunteers. “God prepared a way for me to better deal with my father’s passing,” she says. “Working on this home was therapy.”

A family protected

One year and one month after those two separate phone calls, her father’s prayers came to fruition when Ingrid and her family finally moved into their Habitat home. The last move she hopes to make in her life.

Immediately, without the allergens of their last apartment, Ishmael’s health improved. “When he is sleeping, I have to put my head on his back or his belly to make sure he is breathing,” says Ingrid of his newly silent slumber. Before, she worried about having enough medication and nebulizers to get through each day. Now, she can’t even recall the last time he had to use either. 

Since the spread of COVID-19 in the months immediately after moving in, she’s even more grateful for his improved health and the ability of their home to safeguard it. “We had four people in our apartment. There were five people in the apartment next door. Six in the next one. Eight in the next,” she says of the cramped quarters. “We all used the same spaces, railings, even the same gate.”

Daily life in the apartment, she says, put her family at risk of illness — especially one as communicable as COVID-19 — every day. But their new Habitat home means that, for the first time, safely sheltering in place is possible for Ingrid and her family. When they need to complete their virtual learning, Ishmael and Isabella aren’t interrupted by loud music next door. Ingrid and Jean aren’t forced to brave the laundromat to keep the family in clean clothes. The twins aren’t confined indoors because of unsafe conditions in their complex. They can remain active and creative in their own backyard.

“Now, I don’t have to worry about getting sick. I don’t have to worry about my children getting hurt. It’s the very best feeling as a mother,” Ingrid says. “I’m more grateful now than even when we first moved here. Our home protects us. It makes us strong.”