A Home of their Own
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A Home of their Own
When Dan and Bonnie, a Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco partner family, moved into their Novato home with their daughters back in 2017, they had plenty of plans as new homeowners. “Bonnie and I had a plan for everything….we took some measurements and took lots of pictures. So we were at our apartment with the pictures streaming on the TV, just trying to plan everything out. Where’s this going to go? Where’s this furniture? What do we need.” Almost six years on we sat down with them to hear about how all of those plans unfolded and their experience in a home of their own. Watch more family story videos.
Backbone of the Community
We hear everyday of the struggles of working families to continue to afford to live in the Bay Area, to remain near to where they work, where their children go to school and close by their support network. Bonnie experienced this first hand, “The need for affordable housing is really great. And I do feel like it affects the people who are in large part sometimes the backbone of the community. Dan and I both work in non-profit, and so I see a lot of people who are giving a lot of their time and wanting to help their community by being involved in non–profit work and finding it really difficult to settle down in the community that they’re helping because it’s really hard to rent a home and it’s nearly impossible for a lot of people to find a home to buy.”
Our Forever Home
One of the benefits of homeownership is the stability it provides. Families do better when they have the security of a predictable monthly payment, they are able to save for the future or simply enroll their children in extra curricular activities. Speaking of their home, Dan sums up the impact of homeownership for his family, “It’s allowed us to do the work that we do and raise our kids in a way that we can provide for them in ways that neither of us had and just focus on the things that really matter. And when you’re not able to make ends meet, that completely takes over, is the only thing you can think about, and it’s hard to be a good parent when you’re stressed out and worried about money. It’s not that we have no money worries, but it’s just we have our forever home. We’re never going to leave this place, and that is just an incredibly comforting feeling.”
The Next Generation
The legacy of owning a home is felt for generations. The wealth created from your home as an asset can be passed down to your next generation, allowing for security over generations that is difficult to build by other means. It can also have more immediate and positive impacts. As Dan explained, “I don’t think we would’ve even considered another child if we didn’t live here.”
“There’s genuinely not a day that goes by that we don’t settle down at the end of the day and just say, ‘oh, we love our home.’
– Bonnie, Habitat GSF homeowner
When you support Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco, you invest in your community. You invest in stability for working families. You invest in the next generation in your communities.
You help your neighbors build a home of their own.