HOME OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE
HABITAT HOMES
T
– by Holly Monteith –
hey say “home of the free because of the brave”, but what happens when the brave who’ve served so valiantly come back to find no home for their family or themselves? There are over 20 million Veterans in the United States, and among them, more than 40,000 are homeless. For a time, my husband Kyle, and our family were a part of those statistics. Together, we’re the most recent Veteran Partner Family that Habitat of Humanity of Grand Traverse Region has blessed with the opportunity to build and buy an affordable home. Without the program, our family would currently be homeless. A few years back, Kyle, who served nine years in the United States Navy as a Hospital Corpsman, was working full time. So was I. Together, we were providing the best life we could for our two beautiful boys. We were renting a home in Lake Ann, MI, when the owners decided to sell the house. We tried several different times with different banks to qualify for a mortgage to purchase the home we’d been living in but to no avail. Low-income housing options didn’t pan out for us. Finally, my brother offered to let us move into the unfinished basement of the home he was renting.
Grateful for the helping hand, Kyle used the time in our temporary dwelling to reach out to Habitat for Humanity. He wanted to see if they could point us in the right direction. His email started our journey with Habitat for Humanity. The staff walked us through the steps of repairing our credit and cleaning up our debt, all while being reminded by the crew at HFH to remain hopeful. Our stay with my brother stretched into six months but on June 13th, 2018 we found out we were accepted to the Habitat homeowners program. We were ecstatic for the opportunity to build our forever home. When Habitat for Humanity partners with a family, they don’t just hand all the goodies to you. We had to work for everything HFH was willing to give us. This included Kyle and I each completing 275 sweat equity hours on
GATHER Veterans – 14
