New Homeowner Alfred has his own bedroom – and a bed to sleep in – for the first time in 10 years.
For 10 years, Alfred slept on a couch every night so that his grandchildren could have a bed. His daughter and her children had to move in with Alfred all those years ago, even though his home was a tiny apartment in public Housing. “When it’s your family, you’ll do anything to help them,” Alfred said. “To me, those are all my babies. They mean the world to me.”
For most of his life, Alfred worked on strip jobs, mining coal and driving heavy equipment. But as he got older and the coal industry began to die away in East Kentucky, times got hard and life got that much more complicated. Thoughts about his family’s future plagued his mind, and each night as he laid down to sleep on that couch, he knew they all needed more space and that his grandchildren needed a safer environment to call home.
That’s when he heard about HDA and decided to see what options were available to him.
“I didn’t know anything about this, that this was even a possibility for me,” Alfred said. “But I got to talking to Pam (Short, HDA’s Housing Counselor) and one thing led to another. Now, I got this!” Alfred gestured towards his new home in Gurney’s Bend, blinking back tears.
“You really don’t know what it means. I don’t even know if I can express it,” he said. “It means so much just to have your own room … and your own bed!”
Thanks to you, Alfred now sleeps in a master bedroom in a new 4-bedroom home! He and his family were the first homeowners to move in at Gurney’s Bend, our new 15-home affordable housing subdivision in the Allais section of Hazard, KY.
“If anybody wants to support something that’s a good thing, this is it,” Alfred said. “Just look at what’s been done here – there’s going to be 15 families who have a place to live that probably wouldn’t have a place to live.” On move-in day, Alfred presented a house key to his teenage granddaughter. “You’ve got your own key now,” he said. Thanks to our donors, the future is so much brighter for this entire family!
