If you attended our February 21st dedication at Old Poole Place, you heard me say that this is a holy time. This spring, I have been reminded that our various religious ancestors understood that we need regular practices of prayer, fasting, charity and loving each other; to be the people, the community, and the world, God intends us to be.
Last week, Wolf Plaza transformed into a special kind of Habitat build site. The Habitat for Humanity Campus Chapter at NC State University hosted Shack-A-Thon 2026, bringing dozens of student organizations together to fundraise for Habitat Wake.
The affordable housing crisis in our community is urgent. Habitat Wake is committed to innovating to meet the scale of need, including through systemic policy change across the housing continuum. Every year, Habitat Wake sets policy priorities that reflect the most important housing issues we need to tackle as a community.
“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.
The following is a speech from Habitat Wake founder Rick Beech, delivered to the Apex Town Council on February 10, 2026
I have lived in Apex since 1998. I love living at the “Peak of Good Living”. I was fortunate to move here when families with modest incomes, including many public servants, could afford to live here. I passionately speak tonight with the hope that Apex could again be a place where public servants can live and serve. I plead for the Town’s help so that the dream of serving and living in Apex does not stop with my generation.
Last week, Habitat Homeowner Rae joined nearly 500 Habitat for Humanity leaders, supporters and homeowners in Washington, D.C. to participate in the annual Habitat on the Hill Conference. This gathering provides a platform for Habitat affiliates across the nation to meet with lawmakers and urge them to act on affordable housing solutions. For Rae, it was also an opportunity to share her story directly with her representatives.
"The very first time we volunteered with Habitat the weather was terrible and they had us dig footings out with shovels. As we were driving home that night, we both said, ‘We will never do this again.’”
Amy and Joel would never have imagined that years later they would be at the Habitat Wake construction site every week...for fun!
Their journey into regular volunteering with Habitat was gradual.
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.
“Right now, we are standing in our future home. It’s still just the bones of a house, but soon it’s going to be so much more.”
A few years ago, Joseph and Maria packed up their life and moved across the country to North Carolina. They were searching for new opportunities and a place where homeownership might one day be possible.
Walking through the framed walls of their future home, it was clear that this moment was the culmination of years spent working toward a stable, joyful future.