Dorothy Howard, Houston HFH's first homeowner, looks foward to paying off her mortgage in a few years.

'Mom" Seizes a Better Life ... (continued)

Dorothy Howard, Texas

Like the oak tree she planted nearly 20 years ago, Dorothy Howard has rooted herself in the Houston neighborhood where she became the first Habitat for Humanity homeowner in the city. In 1988, two days before Christmas, she moved herself and her nine grandchildren out of a neighborhood that had become riddled with drug activity and into the stability not only of a Habitat house, but of homeownership as well.

With grandchildren ranging in age from 4 to 18, 10 people in a single apartment presented a challenge at times, she says, describing children sleeping in the living room and simply having no room to spread out. The neighborhood had grown unsafe, and because she knew she could never afford a down payment, her dream of homeownership was but that: a dream. That is until she encountered Habitat for Humanity.

After 500 hours of sweat-equity labor and through a firm resolve to own her own place, Howard's fantasy became reality. "I am totally, completely happy here," she says, "and there's not a mansion in the world I would trade my home for."

Howard's monthly mortgage payment is less today than she paid in rent almost two decades ago. She says the no-interest mortgage has made all the difference in the world, and with only a few years left to pay, she anticipates the day when the entire loan will be retired.

"I want to be able to pay the last note. I want to savor the feeling that I have paid it off and that the house is completely mine."

Howard says her experience with homeownership has taught her a lot, from the practicals of home maintenance to the intangibles of community and permanence, security, stability and the awareness that family--her grandchildren, all adults now--can and do return home to the same place on Rawley Street in Houston.

They might even gather in the shade of Howard's oak tree, itself a solid metaphor for the constancy Howard has found in homeownership and her Habitat house.

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