Habitat Homeowner

Habitat Homeowner Marwa arrived in the United States at age 13 with her family, stepping into a completely new world. As a refugee with Eritrean and Sudanese roots, her early years in the U.S. were shaped by transition, resilience and her family’s determination to build a stable foundation.

They resettled in Greensboro, where she spent her teenage years and later attended UNC Greensboro. After graduating in 2022, she was ready to begin a new chapter. She found a job in Raleigh but could not afford to purchase a home in the area.

“The thing about a craft, a handmade art form, is that when you receive the piece, it has love and prayers woven into its very being. And you can’t buy that at Target.”

At Habitat Wake, we hold a longstanding tradition of gifting quilts or afghans to homebuyers when they close on their homes. These pieces are made by community partners, often members of our faith network, and each one carries a patchwork of care, intention and prayer.

For Jessica, life has always been a balancing act between her work as a preschool account specialist and her role as a mom to three children: a 15-year-old son and two young daughters, ages 2 and 4. Add the constant stress of rental stability, and questions about school zoning, budgeting, and day-to-day life became hard to predict from year to year.

“Basically, outside of working and doing mom stuff, that’s really all I do. And because of how home prices have changed in Raleigh across my life it’s been a struggle for me trying to be a homeowner on my own,” Jessica says.

Chyna is used to caring for others. As a healthcare worker in Wake County, she spends her days (and nights) monitoring patients through some of their hardest moments. But the cost of housing in Wake County has left her little time to care for herself. 

“I was juggling a lot of overtime hours at my job,” she said. “Day in and day out working 12, sometimes 16 hours, just to make ends meet.”

At the center of it all was housing. Chyna was navigating a rental market that continuously moved the goalpost.

In the summer of 2024, Gretchen was caught off guard when her best friend, Mica, suddenly asked, “Hey, what’s your gross income? How long have you lived in Wake County?”

Gretchen laughed, unsure what was happening. “I was like, I have no idea what you’re doing—but here you go.”

What Gretchen didn’t realize at the time was that Mica was filling out a Habitat for Humanity of Wake County application on her behalf.

Tynisha has five months left to reach her goal for this year: get her two daughters into their Habitat Wake home by Christmas. If there’s one word that captures her spirit, it’s dedication.

“I applied to Habitat Wake two years ago and I got denied. My feelings were hurt at first, but I decided to keep trying and do what I needed to do,” she recalls. “They told me my income wasn’t high enough. But I couldn’t let this idea go. I’d always had it in my head that I would get my daughters into a home.”

“First, I tried my luck with a traditional mortgage,” Rosemeri recalled. “And this was right about the time that COVID hit, so it was a nightmare for families who were trying to buy a home. People who had more money were offering $50k to $75k over the asking price. They were buying homes without even viewing them. I stood no chance.”

But Rosemeri refused to give up. The dream of homeownership had been an unwavering goal for many years, and behind it all was a powerful motivator: her children.

“My apartment had gotten too small for us,” Kandy said. “So I was like, well, what could be next? I’m a kitchen supervisor at a restaurant, and things were going good. I felt like I was ready to buy something. I was just in the right spot.”

Kandy and her children were ready for a change. Imagine trying to squeeze four kids (including a set of energetic twin boys) into a small apartment. Space was tight, and it was time to dream bigger.

In 2023, Michelle Hester’s mom called her. She’d seen Habitat Wake's Old Poole neighborhood on the news, and it was only a few miles down the road from them. That night, she and Michelle drove through what was just the beginning of a neighborhood. On that drive, Michelle thought to herself, “This feels like something I could do.”