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A home of their own
Everything was going fine until Mengist Haile's wife was hit by a car.
Two years ago, Haile drove a school bus for Arlington County and his wife, Eritrea, ran a vending machine business.
Since the accident, Eritrea has been on disability, making it nearly impossible for the family of four to scrape together $3,000 a month for the mortgage.
"My income is not enough," Haile said.
Sitting under a sun-scorched tent near Haile, Tigist Terefework fanned her face and kept track of her 8-year-old son, Yeabsera, who was having his face painted.
Terefework and Haile sat on folding chairs on a patch of grass, owned now by Habitat for Humanity. The property will eventually be home to nine families.
"As a single mom, I cannot afford to buy a home for myself. This is the only opportunity I have," Terefework said, adding that she had applied three years in a row to become a recipient of a Habitat home.
The property will soon be affordable condominiums, integrated into a neighborhood of existing housing complexes.
The nine eventual homeowners on this property were chosen from a pool of more than 100 families that applied.
The average monthly rent in Fairfax County is $1,200. People earning minimum wage would have to work about 170 hours a week to afford that rent. There are about 1,100 affordable housing units in the county.
The nine units at Maple Ridge have two and three bedrooms, a single bathroom, a living room and a kitchen, and are 850 to 1,100 square feet.
The property neighbors the second condo complex for the nonprofit in Fairfax. The first is next door and opened its doors to 12 families last spring.
"This is a good day but a little better day will be when we all gather back at the same spot in front of a finished building," said Joe Facenda, president of the Habitat for Humanity Northern Virginia board of directors.
All Habitat homeowners are required to put in between 300 and 500 "sweat equity" hours, donating their time so they will be able to receive approval on their zero-interest loans and new keys to their affordable housing condos.
Haile is spending his weekends driving, lifting, whatever is asked of him.
"Without [this program], I don't know what we would do," Haile said.
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