Mary and Jonathan Miller sit with their children Draeden, 5, and Adwynn, 2, in their new home on Southeast Gravenstein Court in Snoqualmie. Their new three-bedroom condo is the 100th house built by Habitat for Humanity in East King County. (Photo by Tara Ballenger)

By Tara Ballenger, SnoValley Star, December 9, 2009 - UPDATED

For Mary Miller, her new home on Southeast Gravenstein Court in Snoqualmie is a palace.



“It’s more than I could ever have hoped for,” said Miller.

For five years, Mary lived with her husband Jonathan and two children in a rental house that was unaffordable, unheated and unstable—it was in a flood zone and had to be evacuated frequently. Now, they are the proud owners of a new three-bedroom condo.

The Millers are the 100th family that Habitat for Humanity East King County has helped move out of substandard or unaffordable housing and into new homes of their own.

The organization—an affiliate of the national Habitat for Humanity—was started in 1988 in Carnation. Since then, it has built houses in Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, Newcastle, Sammamish and Snoqualmie.

Nearly half of the 100 houses, however, have been built on Snoqualmie’s Koinonia Ridge, where the Millers now live, because of a city mandate to build affordable housing there.

“Getting to the 100th house is a milestone for East King County,” said director Tom Granger.

The East King County chapter builds about ten houses per year. The application process is long and verifies work and housing history to make sure the family has a steady income and can afford their new mortgage.

“Selecting families is a thrill, but it comes along with the need to tell so many other families that they have not been selected,” Granger said. The last opening received 25 applications.

After being selected, the family commits to 500 hours of “sweat equity” helping Habitat build houses—their neighbors’ and their own—and attending classes on home ownership and finances.

For Mary, getting to know the AmeriCorps members and other volunteers who helped build her house and getting to work on the houses that would soon be homes for her new neighbors was one of the best parts of the experience.

“I get emotional every time I think about it,” Mary said as she showed off an upstairs closet that houses the water heater. On the rafters inside the closet, volunteers had scrawled personal notes to the Millers in permanent markers.

After their home is complete, the family will own the house—they pay a zero-interest mortgage equal to the cost of materials and labor, without factoring in the thousands of dollars of donated materials or volunteer labor.

“This is an extremely gracious community,” Granger said. Over 3,500 people volunteer for the East King County chapter each year.

“Affordable housing is such a basic need that people can relate to, and to help somebody in your own community with that basic need is something that people respond to,” she said.

The Millers’ condo will cost them $110,000, well below the starting rates for market-value houses on the ridge. The mortgage payment is different for each family, and is calculated so they spend 30 percent of their income on housing costs.

Granger said each family who goes through the process of getting a home is extremely grateful and hard-working, but for every happy ending, many other families in East King County still go without safe and affordable housing.

Houses that are unsafe or unhealthy because they are leaky, moldy, flooded, overcrowded or with no heat or power are all too common, he said.

“There really aren’t slums in East King County, but there are substandard housing conditions—even in our own community—that are unacceptable.”

Mary and Jonathan said they are happy they were one of the lucky ones.

“We always assumed that we’d be homeowners,” said Jonathan, who works as a trainer at Nintendo, “but then everything started to kind of fall apart.”

Mary has had severe joint pain for five years and underwent four knee surgeries before being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at age 35. The medical bills and lost time from work took its toll financially, and they got stuck in a rut, he said.

Now, the family sees a new beginning.

“For so long, it felt like at any minute the bottom was going to fall out from under us,” Mary said, sitting on the couch with her children in her new living room, “now it feels like we have a future.”

Tara Ballenger: 392-6434, ext. 246, or tballenger@snovalleystar.com.