Barbara quickly made a name for herself around the Habitat office by breaking a record and earning her first 75 hours of sweat equity in just 15 days! She works a split shift as a bus driver with Triangle Transit. Her first shift starts at five in the morning and ends at 10:00 a.m. and she returns to work again at 3:00 p.m. to work into the evening. Every spare moment of those 15 days were spent helping Habitat. “Those 15 days,” she smiles and says, “they are the best thing I ever did.”
Since her move from Puerto Rico several years ago, Barbara has been trying to buy a stable home for her family. She applied for a mortgage seven times before she applied to Habitat. “Every time,” she says, “they’d say your credit is good but you don’t have enough income or credit history.” One day at work, Barbara came across a Habitat brochure and believed she met all the requirements. She appeared in the Habitat office the very next day to turn in her application.
Barbara and her daughters - Amaryllis, age seven, and Crystal, age 13 - will live in the Long Acres neighborhood of Raleigh, in the first new home to break ground as part of Habitat Wake’s Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. “I left Puerto Rico because there was no work there and I came here for a better life. I wanted to be independent,” she explains. “We don’t like to stay stuck,” she says of her family. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to move ahead.”
Barbara’s family includes her 20-year old brother, Ismael. After a younger brother was killed in Puerto Rico, Barbara encouraged Ismael to come live with her. “I was scared something would happen to him, and I wanted to help him grow up.” He is currently learning English and works at Wake Med Apex as a janitor. After moving into her new home, Barbara hopes to save enough money to help Ismael take classes at Wake Tech.
When Barbara talks about her new house, she is practically bursting with excitement and enthusiasm. “The most exciting part,” she says, “is I’m going to help build it. Every day I wake up with the purpose of taking care of my daughters. When I have my house I’ll know my own hands helped. I’ll be paying for something that’s mine, that I know is going to be a safe house for my daughters.”
When Barbara reflects on how much she has been through and what it feels like to watch her home being built, “I have no words to explain it,” she says, “I wish everyone could climb inside me to feel what I feel. It’s so important to me. Compared to everything else in my life, Habitat just feels like home.”
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