Starkville Habitat Restore reaches $1M project goal
by Victoria Bailey
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – More affordable housing is on the way to Starkville thanks to one nonprofit group.
The Starkville Habitat for Humanity Restore reached its $1 million goal this month and can now provide brand-new homes to families in need.
“Went and put in an application. Thank god, I got approved,” said Starkville resident Twana Hubbard
She is talking about the application to kick-start the building of her new Habitat for Humanity home.
“In 2019, my roof fell in, and I was like ‘Oh lord, what am I going to do?’ So, when that happened, I called Habitat. And the lady was like I’m going to put you down. I’m going to put you on the list and I’m like lord I know she ain’t going to put me on the list. Back like it was 1930 or something had a bucket up under there, letting the water drip, but I always put the people in worse shape than I am. Some people don’t have a roof and I tried to deal with it. I put a board up there or whatever and try to make due,” said Hubbard.
Something Hubbard said was hard to deal with while caring for her elderly brother.
“I called about three times, she said I’ll put you on the list and it came on TV, and I said I’m going to go ahead and put the application in, so I dropped the little letter in there, I looked up in the sky like lord help me and dropped it in the box and the next week I got a letter. I’m like ‘Oh lord thank you, Jesus.’,” said Hubbard.
Project Construction Manager John Breazeale said getting families like the Hubbard’s their new home wouldn’t be possible without a helping hand.
“The restore has been critical for cash flow and being able to put all the materials and subcontractors into the next home restore and I think the restore has been up and running for about four years now from my perspective far outperformed anything I expected,” said Breazeale.
And Breazeale said they’re not just trying to support a family in need but the whole community.
“We’re creating new taxpayers and many of the county and starkville city officials have been very supportive of us and what we’re doing and that’s a fantastic collaboration,” said Breazeale.
“We’ve been here for almost 40 years in starkville so there are families where there are children who grow up in the houses and are adults now and have their own children so to see the generational effects of having that stable place to call home for people to go back to and you know now it’s grandma‘s house so it’s really neat to zoom out and see the big picture of that,” said Breazeale.
Hubbard’s new home will be one part of a habitat home subdivision. Habitat Executive Director Amanda Henry said with the continued area support they will keep providing safe comfortable places for folks to live.
“Thank you to Starkville in our community because everybody has been so supportive and so generous with their time and money and to First Baptist and all our volunteers and employees who’ve worked hard to make it happen. It’s really a group effort,” said Henry.
“girl, I boohooed. Been crying ever since. That’s why every time I come up here, I just get so excited and happy.”
The Hubbards will move into their new home before the holiday season.
