MONROE – Abdul Al-Azadi frowns behind his safety glasses, wrinkling up his long thin face. He tips back his baseball cap revealing more of his weathered, brown skin to the brief hint of sun.
Looking toward the general area where his front door will soon open to visitors, Al-Azadi measures wood then places it in front of a saw.
He is very precise. He has to be. He is building a home for the thing he holds most dear: his family.
Everett resident Al-Azadi, an Iraqi immigrant, is a participant in Housing Hope’s Self-Help Housing Program at Sky Meadows West in Monroe. This site is one of two dozen in Snohomish County, including Arlington and Stanwood, that the nonprofit housing developer has established to help more than 150 local families since 1992.
Low-income families can put their name on a list to qualify and become new home owners by working at least 30 hours a week to help build their homes.
The Monroe housing development is one of two in the city started by Housing Hope.
There are eight homes in Sky Meadows West including four townhouse buildings, each with three or four bedrooms.
Diversity has become a natural component of the program as more immigrants have come to Snohomish County, said manager Jeff Nicely, who noted that one of the first people to complete a home in the program was a Ukrainian pastor who subsequently spread the word to his flock.
“Because of the Eastern European community a lot of folks know each other,” Nicely said.
Toni Wiegand, homeownership and loan counselor with Housing Hope, said language is not a barrier. “A lot of families have either someone with them or they speak well enough to do some of the basics,” she said.
Wiegand said it’s important that families understand what the program requires, including the amount of physical labor, also called “sweat equity.”
Al-Azadi can be found many hours a week on the Monroe site. His family are the only Iraqis building their home in Sky Meadows West.
Al-Azadi’s life in Snohomish County is in sharp contrast to the one he left behind in the Middle East. It’s a long way from where he was once forced to live: a tent in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Azadi, who was recently elected president of the Sky Meadows West homeowners association, had fled the war in Iraq and lived among 30,000 others in a Saudi refugee camp in 1991.
“It’s the worst time of my life,” Al-Azadi said. “We were against Saddam Hussein.”
Al-Azadi never thought he’d get to the United States, let alone build his own home in Monroe, partly because of how he and his family were treated in the refugee camp.
“They returned some of the families to Saddam. He killed them,” Al-Azadi said.
In 1994, Al-Azadi came to the United States and found work as a bus driver. He learned of Housing Hope through a co-worker.
The program offered Al-Azadi a chance at giving his two kids a good future in a two-story, four-bedroom townhouse. He started work on the house Aug. 12 and is impressed and grateful for the help he has received.
“Here it’s like if you are on the freeway in a broken car,” Al-Azadi said, “you’d like to have someone stop to help you.”
Like the other families on the site, Al-Azadi completes a demanding 30 hours of labor each week required by the program. He does it after work and on weekends.
Although families began their sweat equity hours in the summer months, Housing Hope staff broke ground and began site work in March.
“It used to be that it was affordable for this program to buy lots all ready,” Nicely said. “We’re now buying raw land.”
When family labor begins, the project is expected to take a year to complete. The 30 hours a week by families and their helpers amounts to 65 percent of the labor need to build each house, Nicely said.
Church groups and volunteers can often be seen at the site helping the families hammer nails, fasten screws and saw wood. Each site is also assigned a construction manager from Housing Hope who is on the site five days a week and oversees the families, giving advice and help.
“That person is a rare person in construction,” Nicely said. “They have the patience to work with amateurs and to work weekends.”
No down payment is required in the Housing Hope program and monthly mortgages can be based on a rate as low as 1 percent. Rates are based on a percentage of the region’s median income, Nicely said.
Although applicants come to Housing Hope as individuals they close their loans and build their homes as a group.
“They are building communities,” Nicely said.
Only one third of the project is subcontracted which helps save on the total mortgage amount. Nicely noted that entry-level housing in the county costs about $250,000. Homes in the Monroe project cost $185,000 to $190,000, not counting the labor contributed by families and volunteers.
“With sweat equity that represents $225,000,” Nicely said.
When owners sell or refinance their homes, a portion of the money is repaid to the loan supplier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The homeowners retain the sweat equity, which is the difference between the appraisal and the loan amount.
Al-Azadi loves the people he is working with as he helps to make a neighborhood. He says there is no difference between Americans and people in Iraq, the ones who are left behind.
“My heart and my thinking stays in the refugee camp,” Al-Azadi said. “I left them on the border of Iraq and Kuwait. One day I hope they can have a better place.”
Christina Harper is a Snohomish County freelance writer. She can be reached at harper@heraldnet.com.
Ten families that have helped build their own homes through Housing Hope will move in to the Port Susan Condominiums March 9, the agency said. There will be a key ceremony at noon at Port Susan Place on 80th Avenue NW a block south of 272nd Street NW.
A new Self-Help Housing program is being established on the Tulalip Tribes Reservation that will involve ramblers built on large lots. It’s aimed at families with at least one tribal member in the household.
For information on Housing Hope’s programs go to www.housinghope.org or call 425-347-6556.
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