(Photo | Courtesy of Bend-Redmond Habitat for Humanity)
Silver Rail Elementary School staff recently joined up with Bend-Redmond Habitat for Humanity to help build on the 30th Anniversary Home for a single mom and her two children. The school staff helped Habitat continue with the framing so that the family can buy it and move in later this year.
Tammy Doty, principal of Silver Rail Elementary School in the Bend-LaPine School District, said, “We had an amazing experience working together as a school community on the Habitat build site. It felt so good knowing we were helping out a family — we took our craftsmanship very seriously, knowing that they deserved our very best. On top of that, we left feeling more confident in our abilities to caulk, hammer in headers, run a table saw and more. It inspired us to challenge the rest of the staff and come again.”
The Bend-Redmond Habitat for Humanity thrives on support from our local community to help us build and serve families and individuals in need of affordable housing. Silver Rail Elementary School is helping us provide opportunities for transformation through stable and affordable housing and for that, we are extremely grateful.
The Bend-Redmond Habitat is one of the few affordable housing builders in Central Oregon providing opportunities for homeownership for low to moderate income people who are housing unstable and make 40-80 percent of the area median income. With their homeownership program, families and individuals are required to volunteer hundreds of hours as the down payment for the home, attend monthly financial education classes and participate in a matched savings program for the closing costs. When those requirements are fulfilled and the house is constructed, the families and individuals purchase it with a below market rate loan for 30 years.
Since 1989, Bend-Redmond Habitat has built 144 homes and repaired 146 more, providing more than 1,009 children and adults a safe, secure and healthy home.
But Habitat isn’t building these homes on their own. In fact, it takes roughly 5,000 people, directly or indirectly, partnering with them on each home so that families and individuals have a chance at a different life. A home creates an opportunity to become stable, for security, a feeling of tranquility and empowers people to become better.
