WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Last fall, Autumn Haley was scrolling through Facebook when she saw that Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity was accepting applications for a home it was building in the region.
“I was just trying to locate and purchase our own home,” Haley, a single mother of three said in a phone interview last week. “I applied as a shot in the dark.”
Haley’s shot in the dark will become reality this month as she and her family plan to move into a three-bedroom home on Nutt Lane in White River Junction.
“Being a single mom and working two jobs, I honestly didn’t think homeownership was ever going to be possible for me,” said Haley, 42, who works as a dispatcher at Irving Energy in addition to being a caregiver for her grandfather.
The White River Junction home is a milestone for Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity too: It is the first time it’s used a modular home as a basis for construction. A key ceremony is scheduled to take place from 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday.
“I think the idea was with the timing when we were starting the project was that if we were going to try to frame a house from the ground up, we’d be framing into the winter,” Ashley Andreas, executive director of the White River Junction-based nonprofit organization and a member of the Hartford Selectboard, said in an interview at the home last week. “If we do a modular shell, we’ll have an airtight, weather-tight structure to work in through the winter with volunteers.”
The roughly 1,300-square-foot shell — which includes three bedrooms, a full bathroom and a half bathroom — cost around $150,000, Andreas said. It was purchased from New England Homes, a Claremont-based company that constructs modular homes onsite before trucking them to their permanent addresses. While construction costs vary based on the size of the home and materials, it typically costs less to frame a home from scratch.
“The big debate that I’ve heard is … all of the benefits of the modular,” which include time, Andreas said, “are those worth the extra … dollars that we have to raise?”
The organization laid the foundation for the home last November on the .2-acre lot it has owned since 2012 on Nutt Lane, and the home was delivered that December, Andreas said. Construction started in January and finished up in August. Traditional builds typically take around 1½ years to complete.
Students enrolled at Hartford Area Career and Technology Center volunteered for more than 600 hours at the site, Andreas added. More than 200 volunteers — including Haley and her family members — contributed around 2,000 hours at the site, she said.
Those family members included two of Haley’s daughters who will be moving into the home with her: Sky Cushman, 17, and Serenity Cushman, 14. A highlight for the trio was picking what colors to paint their rooms: Haley went with purple, Cushman went with pink and Serenity chose gray (she originally wanted to paint her room black, but her mom asked her to reconsider).
“It kind of looks like an Easter house on the inside,” said Haley, who grew up in West Lebanon.
Her total mortgage will likely be around $120,000 and she will likely pay around $1,300 a month. The home’s energy efficiency perks, including solar panels, should help to bring down the cost of utilities.
“I think the Upper Valley is kind of confused about what Habitat is because there’s been a lot of throwback in my face that ‘it must be nice for somebody to build you a house for free’,” Haley said. “That’s not the case. I still have to meet all requirements as far as a credit score; I have to take classes, I have to be approved for a mortgage. I still have to pay for the home.”
Going forward, Andreas would like to see Habitat build homes in a variety of ways, from framing structures from scratch, to rehabilitating existing buildings and installing modulars.
“I think we can increase our impact by … transitioning from one to the next,” she said.
Visit uvhabitat.org for more information about Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity.
