When you visit the oldest home in Sandy Point, you’ll find Loren and Teresa, teenagers Hope and Joseph, and the family’s two adorably rambunctious dogs all enjoying each other’s company. You’ll also find a kitchen that is too small for a family of four, walls with no insulation, a leaky roof, and in the winter, frozen pipes that have left them without water for up to a week at a time. Despite their best efforts to maintain and repair their home, the 1969 manufactured double-wide is becoming less livable by the season.
“Things are just starting to fall apart,” said Teresa. In addition to the inconvenience of constantly making repairs, the home presents a handful of dangers to the family due to its age. “We still have the original wiring in the house. Although the electrical panel has changed, all of the wiring is still aluminum, so it is getting to be a little scary.”
“We’ve held it together with duct tape and bandaids when we’ve had to” said Loren, who was first introduced to Habitat when he volunteered on some builds in the 90’s. “About four years ago, I saw a Habitat advertisement somewhere and I was like ‘Teresa, our house is getting old, what are we going to do for the future? Maybe we should apply for Habitat.’”
After being selected to join our program in the summer of 2023, the whole family got to work right away. “We just started clicking hours away. We’re up to 300 already,” said Loren proudly. You can often find all four of them volunteering at the Habitat Store on the weekends or tabling a booth at one of our many events throughout the year.
Teresa and Loren paid off their home just over a year ago, and have opted to tear it down and build the new Habitat home on the same lot. Though they were given the choice to move into one of our townhome communities, Teresa says the reason they are choosing to stay here “even though it means we’d have to move out of our house, tear it down, build here – for however long that takes, and we’re okay with that – is because we love our neighbors, and we love our neighborhood.”
A new home on this same lot means more than remaining in the strong community they’ve built here over the past decade. For Loren, it means the safety and security of a disability-friendly home where he doesn’t have to rely on his family to perform constant repairs. For Teresa, it’s peace of mind. “Not having to worry about the electrical, the plumbing, the insulation, all of those different things that we’ve been fighting the last 10 years… Just the safety factor is really big for me.”
With the amount of hard work Teresa, Loren, and their family have put in at Habitat, the oldest home in Sandy Point is soon to become the newest Habitat Home in Whatcom County. “We are just grateful to be a part of this,” Loren said with appreciation, “we can all put pride in the fact that we’ve done this together. It makes me grateful. These guys have worked hard and we all have… It’s been a lot of fun.”
