Welcome Home: Building homeowner equity through gratitude and sweat

Sunday was a day all about gratitude for Deon Comer.

At 4:25 p.m., Comer solidified a dream to provide long-term stability for her family.

She was given golden scissors and asked to cut a ribbon wrapped around a house’s front door, and then she was handed the key to her own Wichita Habitat house.

And then, nearly 50 people who gathered in front of her house — from the Catholic Diocese, the neighborhood, friends and family —cheered and applauded.

“Today is very exciting day for our family to be here,” Comer told the group. “This will be a forever home for us — for generations to come.”

Bonnie Toombs, director of the Respect Life Social Justice Office through the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, said that she had been touched by this new homeowner’s generosity of spirit.

“She has an ability to give of herself to help others,” Toombs said.

“We are moving in right after the dedication,” Comer said. “We loaded up the truck Sunday morning and so we will have everything in by Thanksgiving.”

Indeed, the waiting U-Haul truck was parked down the street.

Now, she says, she has a future for not just herself but generations to come.

At age 37, Comer is a single mom with two children. Her family has moved seven times in the past seven years.

Comer’s home is the 33rd built since 2014 in the Wichita Habitat for Humanity’s Rock-The-Block Neighborhood Initiative which buys up empty lots in low-income neighborhoods and places Habitat homes there in efforts to help revive the existing community. It is the seventh built this year; two more are currently under construction.

The home at 1227 N. Estelle was dedicated and blessed Sunday by Bishop Carl A. Kemme. The Catholic Diocese of Wichita sponsored the home. It is the third home built in honor of Pope Francis.

“May those who live here know the love and support of our Christian community,” Kemme said at the dedication.

Comer grew up in a single-parent family, moving from one house to the next.

She wants a better life for her children.

“It is not fair to them to be constantly moving around,” she said. “They have both done real well in different schools and meeting new people. I have been really blessed to have such good children. But it is not fair to them to be constantly moving around and not have those two or three friends consistent through the years as you grow.”

Her daughter, Alicia Minor sang acapella, “Let Joy Awaken.”

Neighbor Kenyal Lattimore recalled meeting Comer at a Habitat for Humanity meeting last March.

“She was like ‘So, what did you do? Well, how do I get it done? How do I get to where I need to be?’ ” Lattimore said. “She has been so delightful and such a joy to get to know. I am delighted to call her ‘friend.’ Welcome to the neighborhood because it is our neighborhood now.”

Lattimore presented Comer with a basket of gifts — “flowers, so you may always know beauty; bread, so your house may never know hunger; salt, so life will always have flavor; a candle, so the house will never know darkness; sugar, so your life will always be sweet and the bible verse to remind you of God’s love, family, neighbors and friends that help you achieve the dream of your own.”

Janet Wilson, president the A. Price Woodard neighborhood group, welcomed Comer and told her “You have neighbors who have already loved on you before you ever came here.”

The new Comer home is within a few miles of each her daughters’ schools and now Comer’s work.

“Home is where the heart is,” said Ann Fox, executive director of Wichita Habitat for Humanity. “The home is a sacred place for all rituals and where memories are built. It is gratifying to know that these two young girls who have spent seven years living in seven places will know at this time next year they will be in the same spot. This house will become the anchor for their family.”

Construction on Comer’s house began in August when the walls were built in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception parking lot at 430 N. Broadway.

It was built by hundreds of Diocese volunteers and Comer, who put in more than 250 hours of sweat equity on the house plus saving up money for the closing costs and completing more than 40 hours of classes on house buying and how to be a good neighbor.

The volunteers wrote messages of messages of love and prayers on the walls of the house.

Comer offered those gathered in front of her house a chance to tour — to smell the new carpets and fresh paint, walk on wood floors and see spacious rooms with ceiling fans.

She vowed on Sunday to never rent again.

“We paid the high rent costs and that made us broke on a daily basis,” she said. “We were paying good money, but it wasn’t comfortable living.”

This story was originally published November 19, 2017 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Welcome Home: Building homeowner equity through gratitude and sweat."