Habitat for Humanity Home Gets Boys Out of the 'Hood

A good mother often makes huge sacrifices for her children and Stephanie Patterson is no exception. About a year ago, Stephanie determined that her twin sons, who were approaching their teen years could be in serious danger if they remained in the apartment in Lake Heights.

Lake Heights is a Carbondale neighborhood, consisting mostly of public housing, and with a bad reputation locally. "A lot of people there are involved with things I didn't want them into - drugs, shootings, theft," Stephanie said.

Young African-American males have a hard enough times without having to fight their environment, she said. So, she began looking for a way out.

"I took the apartment there thinking it would be a temporary thing," she said. "But a short time turns into a year, turns into five years, and you know you have to get your kids out of there."

"I didn't grow up in that kind of environment and I didn't want them to either," she said. Stephanie grew up in Carbondale, mostly raised in Brookside Manor, an apartment complex close to SIU. "I always had it in me to want better for them, so we had to get out of there. I didn't want them to become the victims of crime or the crime environment."

Josh and Simeon are polite, well-behaved and hard-working young men, Stephanie pointed out with a mother's justifiable pride, "and I want it to stay that way."

Friends knew that Stephanie was looking for a way out and that as a single mother raising two boys, she didn't have a lot of extra cash or good options. "I knew someone who was familiar with the Habitat for Humanity program and recommended me for it. Because of my situation, we were moved to the top of the list."

In fact, Stephanie and her boys could have had a new home sooner, but the first ones that they were eligible to help build were in another neighborhood that Stephanie was not happy with. "It would have been like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire," she said. "You can build a brand new house, but if it's in the 'hood, then you are still in a bad place."

So, she and the boys began work in spring 2007 on their own home. Nine months later, just in time for Christmas, they moved in to their new home on North Robert Stalls Avenue in northeastern Carbondale. Much of the neighborhood is populated by elderly residents, but Stephanie said that suits her and the boys just fine. The neighborhood is quite and friendly and most of all - safe.

Josh and Simeon, her sons, did a little bit of everything in building the house, and worked on other habitats homes as well. They helped frame the building, put in insulation and painted walls. They even built the deck off the backdoor of the house. The boys also worked on some of the homes on Chestnut Street that did not have enough volunteers.

In all, to qualify for the Habitat for Humanity Home, Stephanie and the boys had to put in more than 300 hours of sweat equity, working on their home or others in the program. For the boys, who were often the youngest volunteers on the site, it meant learning to build a house from the ground up. They helped clean the lots, built walls and, basically, followed directions.

"Now we know how to do it. We could build a tree house or something," Josh said. But neither of the boys is in a hurry to rush into another home building project. It was, they said, a lot of work. Being in the new house is worth it, especially having their own room and having a deck.

Stephanie got to concentrate on the less physical, but equally strenuous tasks of building the house. "It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be to decorate, to walk into the store and pick out carpet and paint and ceiling fans," she said.

"I had never had the opportunity to do that before so it was really challenging. I had friends who gave me good advice, but we still had to try to figure it out within the budget and have it be something we could live with."

Stephanie chose to go with neutral colors, mostly in shades of tan, in hopes that it would be easier to decorate long term and hold up to the traffic of teenage boys.

The house did not come without its tribulations. It took nearly nine months to complete, a process that would have been much shorter if they had more volunteers and the timing of the final move put Stephanie in a new sort of financial hardship.

"You know that the payments you are making are for your house, that you own it," she said, "but the budgeting is different. Trying to figure out how to make all the ends meet can be strenuous."

Adding to the strain and the joy was the family got to move into their new house just weeks before Christmas. That meant that in addition to the new house payment, Stephanie was trying to buy the furnishings for her new house and still get Christmas for her children. "We were happy to be able to celebrate in our house," she said.

In January, things were still tight for the family as the boys celebrated their first birthday in the house as well. Stephanie is still looking for a few things to make the house more of a home, including decorations and dressers, but she knows that those things will come in time.

"Right now, it's a bit tough," she said. But there are things that make it worth every minute of the struggle. "Them having their own room, being in something you can call your own, that makes it worth it."

For more information about Habitat for Humanity please contact Jackson-Union County Habitat for Humanity at P.O. Box 1064, Carbondale, IL 62903. For information about volunteering please call Lee Brackett at (618) 457-8480.