Donescha couldn’t believe the text she was reading, but after almost 10 years in her rental house in Lancaster, her landlord messaged her that she’d have to move out.
“Being there so long I thought they would at least, say, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about selling the property. Can you start looking for a place?’ But that’s not what happened,” says Donescha. “They gave me 30 days, not 31 not 32.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse.
“I’d just had a baby and I wasn’t even working at the time,” says Donescha, who had to leave her home care nursing job when, at eight months pregnant, it became unsustainable and potentially unsafe to care for her autistic patient who regularly had siezures.
Not even the cruelest April Fools prankster would consider making this joke, but there Donescha was: she and her three children, Sincere, Si’ere and her five-month-old son Kyngston, had one month to move out of the house she’d lived in for nearly a decade, on April 1.
“It just was a very dark time for me,” says Donescha. “I was always pretty secure with where and how I lived.”
What had once felt like a home was now a property she had 30 days to vacate. One month to pack up a house she’d been living in for 10 years and search for a new apartment while also looking for a new job to pay for everything; not to mention do all of this while taking care of her new baby and two other children.
All those elements were now added to all the usual barriers to finding affordable housing.
“It was hard to find a place with limited money,” says Donescha. “You had to have a perfect credit score and three times the rent. I was up day and night trying to find a place, sending messages to people, putting in applications – and wasting money putting applications, they charge you fifty, sixty bucks per application, and if you’re not approved, they still take your money. So, I had to come up with money that I didn’t have. The stipulations they have now to rent are just beyond me.”
To say it was a stressful situation would be an understatement.
“I searched until I couldn’t search no more,” says Donescha. “I was afraid I was going to be homeless with my children.”
Donescha says moving back with her mother – who is now in the Habitat program too, was always an option, but she was committed to finding her own place and eventually landed another apartment in Columbia. The move meant her children would be going to a new school district. And she had to spend more money to be able to start moving 10 years’ worth of belongings ahead of her 30-day deadline.
On the first day of April, what would have been a day for her oldest son, Sincere, to open boxes of gifts for his 16th birthday instead turned into a day of moving boxes of memories and lugging the last of the furniture in and out of a truck. And then giving her empty former home one last unceremonious look-over.
“To me, 16, it’s a big deal,” said Donescha. “I mean, he definitely understood, but I’m sure it hurt him. This all directly affected my children, which I’m sure that wasn’t (the landlord’s) intentions, but they didn’t care, clearly.”
Donescha, who now works as a certified nursing assistant at Willow Valley Communities, heard about the Habitat homeownership program from a friend who was already in the program.
“I always wanted to be a homeowner,” says Donescha. “So I signed up for this program and I’m so happy I was accepted. It was a complete blessing. I am on my way to purchase.”
Donescha quickly began working on her sweat equity hours and is now matched with one of the five new homes at the Linden Street Build in Columbia.
“I couldn’t ask for anything more,” says Donescha. “Once I was in that situation, I knew I had to make a change and do something, because I did not want to ever feel like somebody could put me in that position ever again.
Owning her own home will bring a sense of stability to Donescha and her children’s lives.
“It will mean the world to me and my children,” says Donescha. “I am at ease. I am at peace. I don’t ever have to worry about going through that ever again. I’ll be the first one of my mom’s five kids that will own and I feel like it just sets the tone for my children. My mom is in the program now, and she wants to own. Out of all my close friends, I’ll be the first one to own. It’s not impossible. You just have to work for it.”