Habitat for Humanity Building Blitz provides homes for 5 Raleigh families

Ashia Arain has already decided where the television and Christmas tree will go in her new house and her 5-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter have picked out their bedrooms.

“This is the first time the have had their own room,” Arain said.

Finding a place to call home has been hard for the family.

“Living in an apartment, from one apartment to the next to the next to the next and it was so expensive, I could not keep up with it,” Arain said. “It is not stable at all.”

Arain and some of her new neighbors on Neuse View Drive turned to Habitat for Humanity. Fourteen builders joined forces to build five new homes in Raleigh.

The families moving in will have affordable mortgages that are no more than 30 percent of their income.

“There is a significant shortage of affordable housing in this country,” said Shawn Poe pf Ply Gem, a building products company and sponsor of the Building Blitz.

“The road that they’ve traveled to get to have one of these homes and the impact that it’s going to have on their lives, there are a lot of folks choking up this afternoon when they are handed their keys.”

The furniture hasn’t been moved in yet, but Arain already says her new house feels like home.

“I’m sitting in front of a house that I am going to own soon so this is just, what more can anybody ask for,” she said.

The five families receiving new homes should be able to move in by the end of the month. Habitat for Humanity plans to build 60 homes in the area this year.