Home for the Holidays
Carmela and her two daughters will enjoy an amazing present this Christmas: A big box wrapped in pale yellow paint, trimmed in white with a bow on top of composite shingle roofing. But like most pretty packages that we wait in lines for, work hard to afford and desire the most, Carmela knows that what’s inside the box is what really matters.
For Carmela, a goal-oriented single mother, what really matters after purchasing her Habitat for Humanity home in San Mateo is a home without restrictions. A home where her two daughters can paint their own rooms any color they choose. A home with a back and front yard where her kids can run, play and ride bikes. Most importantly, a home that allows her to live close to her cherished family and local church.
“Even my church family helped me,” Carmela says while reflecting on her “sweat equity” hours every family agrees to complete before purchasing a Habitat home. “My pastor did a blessing of the keys.”
Carmela worked towards her new home as part of Habitat Greater SF’s affordable homeownership program for local working families. After completing 500 hours of “sweat equity” on the construction site and attending a series of homebuyer readiness workshops, the family purchased the home with an affordable, zero-interest mortgage and no down payment.
The same family and local community that helped her build her new home will join her to celebrate her first Christmas dinner, choose the perfect Christmas tree, and hang their new Christmas lights around the awning. Even though those ornaments and delicious foods symbolize a great holiday season, it’s being together with her loved ones and hearing excitement from her daughters that makes Carmela bright with happiness.
“Mommy, when are we going to get our lights?” she hears her daughters asking. Before her new ownership they never had room for decorations. Carmela and her family will enjoy many new family traditions in their new Habitat home, like the joy of owning their new Cockapoo puppy named Grace and a blown up Santa on their front lawn.
However, they won’t leave behind all their traditions. “Even though they have separate rooms they still tend to sleep together,” she says. Carmela can sleep easy this holiday season knowing her girls are wrapped securely in their new home.
Preparing Families for Homeownership- Homebuyer Readiness Program
When families are disqualified from the homeowner selection process, it is a setback but not the end of their dream of owning a Habitat home.
Since Habitat introduced the Homebuyer Readiness Program (HRP) earlier this year, more than 300 families have attended three new workshops that address the biggest problem areas causing disqualifications from the Habitat program, including: high debt, bad credit and poor money management.
“Families are becoming more aware of the issues that they never thought about before and it is empowering them to take more control,” says Lydia Lopez, program consultant.
Many families have very little knowledge of how to change their credit scores, spending habits and debt. The HRP workshops give them the information they need to change their financial situation and help get them on the right path to setting realistic goals, like budgeting, saving and on-time bill payment. One-on-one credit counseling is also available to families.
Rather than dwelling on past problems and missteps, the workshops give families tools and resources to make positive changes that will help them attain the home of their dreams. “We try to keep focused on the future and about moving forward,” says Lopez.
“I made many mistakes in the past because I did not know anything about credit.”
Habitat Family’s First Thanksgiving in New Redwood City Home
Arcenio and his wife Bertha used to prepare two Thanksgiving turkeys in the small kitchen of their cramped one bedroom apartment, load them into the car alongside their four children and drive to his niece’s house to celebrate the holiday, leaving behind the mouth-watering aromas that filled the kitchen after hours of cooking and basting.
This year Arcenio will carve out new holiday traditions. He will start by returning his niece’s hospitality and welcoming her to his new three-bedroom Redwood City home for Thanksgiving dinner. “We have the same amount of food but now our space is bigger and we don’t have to go anywhere. Our family can celebrate with us in our new home,” said Arcenio.
Arcenio and Bertha acquired their home as part of Habitat Greater SF’s affordable housing program for local working families. After completing 500 hours of “sweat equity” on the construction site, as well as extensive homeownership training, the family purchased the home with an affordable, zero-interest mortgage and no down payment.
When Arcenio moved from Mexico to California, he had a goal to provide his family with the space they needed to live comfortably and work towards their dream of homeownership and education. Before moving to their Habitat home, Arcenio’s three daughters shared the bedroom of their small apartment while he and his wife slept on the floor of the living room with their young son. Hosting a family event was out of the question in such tight quarters.
“We are very happy and excited that at last we are going to eat turkey in our own home.”
This year, Arcenio’s children will savor the taste of mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce while creating new memories of their first holiday dinner. Arcenio’s young son may delight in showing relatives his new bedroom and the family will be thankful for the home where many more milestones will be celebrated in the years ahead.
A Special Gift For Christmas
The most special gift this Christmas for Marjorie will not be what is brightly wrapped in boxes and bows underneath the tree, but the tree itself.
When Marjorie moved to the United States from Honduras 16 years ago, she was always unable to fit a real pine tree into her small apartments. However, this year the Christmas tree she will buy from a farm in Half Moon Bay will not only symbolize a new home but a healthy living for her family.
“It will remind me of back in Honduras when we had a real Christmas tree,” she says. “Now I have the space and will get to enjoy the smell.”
Marjorie recently acquired a home in Menlo Park with a zero-interest mortgage and no down payment as part of Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco’s affordable housing program for local working families. She became eligible for the home following an extensive selection process, 500 hours of “sweat equity” on the constructions site, and after completing Habitat’s homeownership training program.
Before moving into her home, Marjorie, a single mother, lived in a one bedroom apartment in San Mateo with her son and mother. While studying to receive a masters degree in early childhood special education from San Jose State University and working full-time as a social worker, her only private space at the end of the day was a long soak in the bathtub. Now she has a room of her own in the three-bedroom home and is able to relax in privacy. “In the end it is just nice to have the time and space to reflect on the day,” she said.
Marjorie also for the first time has the space to entertain friends and family for the holidays. She will be cooking up a traditional Honduran feast of tamales with banana leaves and paella with chicken, ham and turkey. She also will decorate her tree with traditional bulbs and lights, as well as the special touch of a Honduran nativity scene.
“I feel very blessed that I have the opportunity to become closer to the people that I love.” she says.
Marjorie’s home was made possible through Habitat’s foreclosure recovery effort — the Neighborhood Revitalization Program — helping to stabilize communities that have been hard-hit by the housing crisis. Under the program, which receives support from the city of Menlo Park, local banks, churches and private donors, Habitat Greater San Francisco purchases and renovates foreclosed homes, creating new affordable homeownership opportunities for local families.
Discussing Gender with S. Bear Bergman
In Butch Is a Noun, S. Bear Bergman whittles down the often convoluted issues of gender identity through personal observations about gendered cultural norms like which bathroom and what clothing one chooses, and argues against the gender binary from the positive perspective of love and acceptance.
What were you trying to convey in your first chapter, “I Know What Butch Is”?
I really wanted to make the point that there is no one true way to be butch. I think that often butches get shamed or critiqued or disregarded because of some other person’s statement that they’re “not doing it right.” I’m saying: Listen, pay attention to good role models and then do it how it comes naturally to you.
What is it about gender that makes everyone so hardheaded?
It’s about how we live in the world every day, and it piles onto everyone, no matter where else they are privileged or disempowered. It grabs hold of us when we’re tiny—pink and blue blankets, dolls and trucks—and refuses to let us go. The culture never stops trying to police it.
Why are bathroom politics so important to examine?
Bathrooms are one of the places in public where you have to make an unequivocal statement about your sex. Many trans folks point to the first times they passed in “the other bathroom” as great moments of triumph in their gendered journeys.
Why do you translate transgender literally?
I translate it literally in the book because I want to make a point—that transgender is not about “the opposite gender.” There is no “opposite gender,” just some others. So I want to say, specifically, clearly, that being transgendered is about crossing—crossing out of boxes.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
This isn’t a movie. A two hour feature where lipstick is applied, stereotypes glimmer in cheap sequins, and the violent death scene is cut away just before the first blow. No, transgender violence can’t be described in a feature film.
No one sees the whole story on television either. What they see instead is a high school photo in a newspaper. And while local news reports crack open the story of an unidentified transgender person stripped naked and left in a pit, in a parking lot, in the street, in their home disfigured, stabbed and shot repeatedly and strangled, the violence carries on.
That’s the point of a candlelight vigil planned by a local advocacy group in honor of a murdered transgender person whose name hasn’t been released yet — because no one is sure who it is.
This Sunday, the 18th of November, at Preservation Park’s Niles Hall in Oakland, the 2nd Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance will commemorate the people who experienced a lifetime of hatred, and ultimately fell to anti-transgender violence over the past twelve months.
Planned by Tri-City Health Center’s TransVision program, the event will be one of over 200 ceremonies across the nation and in many foreign countries that aim to empower the community and educate others that violence isn’t just blood and tears, but fear.
Locally — a transgender woman named Ruby Rodriguez was strangled, and left lying naked on March 16 on a street in San Francisco. Her death remains unsolved, which isn’t uncommon in transgender cases.
Across the country in Nashville, Tennessee, another transgender woman named Nakia Ladelle Baker was killed by a blow to the head with a blunt object and left in a parking lot behind a nightclub frequented by transgender people.
The event will drive home that violence against transgender people goes beyond physical pain and suffering. It includes the rejection of proper health care, emotional and mental turmoil, and self-inflicted situations –“What else is there for me, and this is all I know.” Add to that – suicide, which takes many transgender lives and can’t be underestimated as a product of societal ostracizing.
As well as remembering the transgender victims of violence and hate crimes, the vigil will recognize HIV/AIDS and tobacco-related illness as two other major health issues that have disproportionately affected transgender people living in Alameda County.
It may just be another day for passers-by, but it will also serve as a daily reminder to all transgender people in danger of violence and death for expressing their reality and truth.
And it is actually just a movie unless we stop it–the fear, the violence, and the hatred. We need to stop watching and become active to learn and change the pattern of hate that isn’t just captured under a body bag, but is raging and alive inside people.
Where: Preservation Park, Nile Hall, 1223 Preservation Park Way
When: Sunday, December 18; 6 pm to 8 pm
