“For the past two years, I haven’t had anybody come to the house. We haven’t been able to have any sort of get-togethers at the house. Just because of the state of it.”
“It” belongs to Erica, a single mother, caring for her three children as well as her aging father.
Two years ago, a leak became a flood and turned her world upside down.
“A flood from the bathroom on the second floor drenched a good portion of the floor down to the kitchen area,” Erica explained.
She reached out to her insurance company to cover remediation, but her policy didn’t cover repairs. Once the damaged drywall and flooring were cut out, Erica was left with an unfinished home.
As a stay-at-home mom for her youngest child with autism and a caretaker for her father, Erica didn’t have the finances to cover repairs estimated at $50,000. She had no choice but to leave the repairs undone.
For years, she lived with plywood instead of flooring, a kitchen ceiling with exposed wood supports instead of drywall and missing sheetrock in her bathroom.
“It’s been awful,” Erica said. “Especially in the beginning, my kids would ask, ‘When are we gonna get it fixed, Mama? Why does the house still look like this?’”
One day, Erica looked around her home, telling God, “There’s no way this is going to get fixed.”
She started looking online for any organizations that could help, and Home Repairs Ministries came up in her search.
“I was like, ‘Are you serious? This actually exists?’”
But even after Erica applied, she wasn’t confident Home Repairs could help.
“When Ashley [Henkle, HRM’s Program Coordinator] contacted me to confirm a date [for HRM volunteers] to come out, I was pinching myself,” she said.
The first wave of volunteers visited Erica in July to replace sheetrock upstairs and downstairs.
“When they came in, the first thing they did was pray together as a group with me. It was pretty amazing,” Erica shared.
“I noticed how welcoming everybody is [with Home Repairs Ministries], including the volunteers. I hadn’t had anyone come into my home for a few years, and then this whole group of people came at once. You automatically think, ‘What are they going to think?’ But they were very loving and made me feel comfortable.”
Even though HRM isn’t done with repairs yet, any progress is encouraging to Erica.
“It was so dark in the kitchen, and I had to put lamps around to help with the lighting. There was also a huge echo we didn’t realize until the sheetrock came back on,” she explained.
“I could noticeably see a difference when they put the sheetrock up. The whole kitchen just got lighter.”
The night after the first repairs were done, Erica was emotional.
“I couldn’t believe this actually came together,” she said.
The first step in Erica’s project is complete, but work remains! When you give today, you can fund repairs for Erica and homeowners like her, restoring the safety and dignity they deserve. Click here to donate.
