Finishing touches for the most recent Habitat for Humanity build came down to the wire, with appliances arriving the day before a celebration to welcome the family who will be calling it home.
Samantha Kyle and her two children cut the ribbon on their new house during a dedication ceremony held Saturday. The Wellington Street West townhouse is one of two recently completed as the most recent Habitat for Humanity project.
“I am very relieved to get to this point where we are about to move in,” said Kyle. “Leading up until today I have been very nervous that I wouldn’t be able to move in because something could have gone wrong and they would have had to tell me I had to wait another couple of months.”
Kyle said she is relieved that everything that is supposed to be in the house for move-in day is in its right place.
Getting the home ready for the dedication was a race to the finish, said Katie Blunt, executive director of Habitat for Humanity Sault Ste. Marie. The appliances for the build arrived on Friday, the day before the dedication ceremony.
“With COVID there are lots of delays in materials and appliance delivery,” said Blunt.
Coordinating contractors to work around materials shortages has been another challenge, she said, but was made easier with the help of Sal-Dan Construction Group and other partners.
The next-door unit is also completed but a family has not yet been chosen to occupy it out of the 183 applications the organization received for the most recent build.
“Ideally we would have liked to have them in place for the dedication today because the house is done, but within the next month we will be announcing a family,” said Blunt.
That number of applications for the most current build is up from about 96 received last year and more than three times the 56 received by the organization in 2019.
”It demonstrates the need for affordable housing in Sault Ste. Marie,” said Blunt of the increase.
Kyle put a lot of thought into what she was going to wear for the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday to honour her Ojibwe and Cree heritage.
“I looked in my closet and I saw my ribbon skirt and I decided to put it on because that is what I feel most confident in,” said Kyle. “It shows my culture, that I am Indigenous and I made it myself. It has significant meaning to it.”
The skirt features a rainbow pattern to represent Indigenous people who are LGBTQ+ and two feathers on the front.
“To me, they represent that we have a two-spirited people population of people that culturally and traditionally we hold in high regard,” she said.
Kyle said her children, both 12 years old, have already chosen their rooms and the single-parent family will begin moving immediately from the apartment they have been living in for the past few years.
“Now I feel like we are moving into a different phase of life, where I am more established in my career, I know what I want to do in life, the kids are going to be teenagers soon and becoming more independent,” said Kyle. “I feel like getting this house at this time is perfect for us.”
Habitat for Humanity families are not simply given a house, something Blunt said is a common misconception. The family must assume the mortgage and be able to make the payments.
“It was a hand up, not a hand out,” said Blunt.
In addition to issuing the mortgage, Kyle had to perform volunteer service to qualify. She said that was a challenge because of the pandemic.
“Having to do 500 volunteer hours over 11 months and having to do them during shutdowns, that was stressful because I was still working full time,” said Kyle.
Many of those volunteer hours were performed at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which was closed a number of times over the last 20 months. Kyle and her children also spent many hours painting her own unit and the one that will soon house a next-door neighbour.
The two units were built new from the ground up on a vacant parcel of land donated to Habitat by the city with energy efficiency in mind. It features a high-efficient furnace and hot water heater, among other attributes.
“We commit to lowering our energy consumption by 25 per cent compared to the Ontario Building Code,” said Blunt of all new Habitat builds.
The focus on energy efficiency in new builds will trickle down to the new owners, something that is not lost on Kyle.
“I don’t have to worry about how high my PUC bill is going to be,” she said.
Habitat is looking ahead to its next project, a single-family accessible home to be built at 23 Blake Street.
The property for the Blake Street build was donated by the city and Blunt said Habitat hopes to break ground on it in the spring or summer.
Habitat was originally planning to develop a five-plex at 661 Goulais Avenue in 2022 instead of the Blake Street build, but Blunt said that project has been put on the back burner until at least 2023.