BLAINE, Minn. – (Aug. 24, 2017) – Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity works to build and rehab affordable homes. More than one thousand families in the metro area have bought homes through Habitat; and the homes are mostly built by volunteers. A block of homes near the Lexington Athletic Complex in Blaine has eight houses that have been built or are being built by Habitat, and this week CenturyLink team members volunteered their time to work on a house for a future home owner.
“CenturyLink wanted to give back to the communities where we live and work, and Blaine is a wonderful, vibrant community and we thought doing a habitat for humanity sponsorship would be a great way to go,” said CenturyLink Rep., Wendy Paulson.
“We have 54 of our CenturyLink crew members out here over the next three days, doing a variety of different things here for this wonderful family that will be moving in here.”
Habitat for Humanity in Minnesota builds about fifty houses a year for families in need.
“So there’s a family of five, mom and dad and three kiddos and some of the kiddos range from elementary school all the way up to high school,” Paulson said.
The father has been spear-heading the process. Kwot Opongow immigrated from Sudan to the US in 1993 and said it’s been hard dealing with housing.
“My life was difficult because I keep moving to apartment to apartment,” Opongaw said.
Soon public housing became too expensive for his family.
“The rent gone up to one thousand one hundred something and a lot of things, we cannot cover,” Opongow said.
They knew it was time for more space, but finances still remained an issue.
“When we think about that, buying the house, we don’t know where we’re going to get the money from,” Opongow.
It wasn’t until his wife decided to just take a shot on applying for Habitat for Humanity.
“For me I give up when we keep planning about that but my wife she tried to go to the Habitat for Humanity and then she brought the application, when she asked me about it, I was like, ‘hmm maybe it’s not good’ and she was like, ‘I’m going to try’ and I was like, OK you try,'” Opongow explained.
The process took about two years for Opongow’s family. Bethany Juedes of Habitat for Humanity said there’s a lot of things that go into selecting families.
It’s a very long process, a lot of paperwork, a lot of background checking, all of that stuff, we check credit we check all of that before they’re even accepted into the program,” Juedes said.
Finally, for Opongow and his family, the process paid off.
“I got a call from a lady over there and she was like, ‘Mr. Kwot, you have been selected for the house,’ I was like, ‘what?’ I was kind of numb, I was like, ‘I don’t believe that,’ she was like, ‘yea you will see it when you come over here'” Opongow said.
Opongow said his wife was so shocked, she almost didn’t believe him.
My wife, she said, ‘really?’ I was like, ‘yea!’ and then when she came home she was like, ‘we’re going to call them tomorrow if it’s true, maybe you’re just faking it,’ I was like, ‘no I’m not kidding with you.'”
With over 2,000 families on the list, choosing who gets a home is hard.
“I’m sure it’s hard to say no to ton of families but you get to say yes to at least one,” said Jeudes.
“You know, I’m so happy to get a house like this,” Oponogow said. “I’m very happy.”
If the home build stays on track, Opongow and his family should be able to move into their new home just before Christmas.
