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Written by Clark Vilardebo
Habitat for Humanity York County does more than build and repair homes – we also place an emphasis on community outreach. One of the many ways we do that is through the various programs offered here.
The Home Ownership Program, which Habitat is famously best known for, makes sure that homebuyers purchasing a Habitat home do not spend more than 30% of their income on housing, avoiding being cost-burdened by their housing cost.
The Home Repair Program is another focus here, as building a home is not enough – you have to preserve it too.
Having the correct deeds and paperwork is important to allow older adults to safely age in place, and also allows them to pass a meaningful asset on to build generational wealth.
The third program in Habitat for Humanity of York County’s suite of offerings is the Financial Capability Program, which is a financial literacy program that helps attendees know everything that they need to know to be prepared for home ownership.
This program has been a huge success. When it first started out, 2% of families who applied for our program were finally ready to purchase a home. Now, after implementing financial education before families apply, it’s up to 22%.
HFHYC also provides Senior Sense, which is a similar program for senior adults, and Piggy Banks to Paychecks, which is for younger children and teenagers.
After the April 2024 hail storm in Rock Hill and Hurricane Helene, disaster response and preparedness have been a focus for the HFHYC staff.
Krista Parenti, Director of Programs Services, oversees all these programs.
Parenti has been involved with nonprofit organizations for a while, but she says the “person centered and solution focused” approach at Habitat drew her to working here.
“[It] really focuses on ‘how can we be more equitable in our community,’ and ‘how can we involve our community in the decisions that we’re making,’ instead of making decisions for the community,” Parenti said.
Improving the communities families are living in is an important aspect of Parenti’s role, mentioning Rock the Block and Place Making Days as community revitalization events she helps organize for HFHYC.
Parenti says the Home Repair Program is where she sees the most work.
“Our home repair program reaches a lot of families. I mean, this last fiscal year alone, we reached 55 families.”
Being in charge of these programs, Parenti sees many success stories, and she did not hesitate to share them.
“For our new home ownership program, we did a closing in late June for a multi generational family. It was a son and his parents. His father is a veteran, and he is their primary supporter. So he takes care of them, he helps pay their rent, and makes sure they get everything they need. And he works really hard – he’ll work seven days a week sometimes, so being able to put them in a home that was going to give him the opportunity to have a lower monthly payment for a home, give his parents somewhere where they could be stable that was more accessible to them was really impactful,” Parenti said.
Parenti continued, “We do a lot of home repairs for the April hailstorm and Hurricane Helene related repairs. We had one homeowner, she was hit by Hurricane Helene really hard. It impacted her roof. She had a serious roof leak, so she put a tarp over her roof to mitigate that. You know, while she was waiting on repairs, and the city was fining her every day for that tarp for something that was completely out of her control. So being able to help families like that who are experiencing those types of things has been really big. We were able to fix her roof, and she’s no longer getting fined every day.”
As previously mentioned, disaster response has been a big focus since the April 2024 hail storm and Hurricane Helene, and there is currently a program dealing with it in the pipeline.
As for other programs in the near future, Parenti talked about multi-family developments, which are going to be single family attached development townhomes.
“That’s going to allow us to build multiple homes next to each other at the same time, which is going to help us increase that capacity and build more homes at once.”
Parenti also mentioned a program partnering HFHYC with York schools, giving students an opportunity to build homes and help in their community.
