Local Habitat for Humanity instills financial wisdom, pride in homeownership

McALLEN — Juan and Irma Muñoz couldn’t believe it. Juan especially.

Owning a home was a pipe dream for the Muñoz family. Irma worked as a cleaning woman and Juan at a gas station. They were resigned to raising their three children in cramped, government housing for the rest of their lives.

When they arrived at the empty plot of land that Rio Grande Habitat for Humanity said would be the site of their new home, a stake with “The Muñoz Family” inscribed across it stuck out from the dirt.

That’s when they finally believed.

“We’ll never be able to repay such a miracle,” Irma, 57, said at her kitchen table last week, a full 19 years after that moment.

The Muñoz family represents the first batch of families Rio Grande Habitat for Humanity began putting into homes upon its inception in 1988. A week ago, the nonprofit’s board members and volunteers celebrated the Muñozes — and another McAllen family — as the 16th and 17th families to have paid off their mortgages during the agency’s brief history.

In an economy still roiled by mortgage defaults and the overspending of American consumers, Irma Muñoz may have missed the real miraculous moment here.

“It just says that, ‘Yes, we lived in substandard housing before, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be successful homeowners,’” said Myra Martinez, executive director of Rio Grande Habitat. “They live with a lot less and they’re still able to pay their mortgage, which is something I haven’t even done yet.”

The families the agency helps would not be able to qualify for a traditional mortgage otherwise, board member Bill Jones said, because their income level and credit score are often too low.

A family’s total household income must not exceed 60 percent of the area’s median income level to qualify for Habitat. That’s about $23,000 for a family of four in McAllen, Martinez said.

Habitat builds a home at no profit with the help of the family it selects and through volunteer labor and donations of money and materials. The family must put in 300 hours of “sweat equity,” either helping to build the home or helping at the nonprofit’s warehouse outlet at 412 W. Ash Ave., McAllen.

The concept has worked well since the original Habitat was founded in 1976 with headquarters in Americus, Ga. That same year, construction began on the agency’s first house, in San Antonio, the location of Habitat’s first affiliate.

Other affiliates have sprouted up across the globe and similar organizations like the local Affordable Homes of South Texas and Proyecto Azteca, have followed their formula.

While not all the families the local Habitat helps are as prompt with payments as the Muñozes, there have only been two foreclosures since the Rev. Ernest Miller founded the Rio Grande affiliate 21 years ago, Jones said. The affiliate has built 108 homes in that time.

The budget training and financial advice the agency provides to its clients fosters prudent financial planning and a sense of pride in homeownership that make families like the Muñozes “great ambassadors for the program,” Martinez said. Habitat also works with families having difficulty meeting payments and keeps an eye on them. In the first year, the family’s total outside debt level cannot exceed $2,000.

“Maybe that’s something some of the big lenders can learn: Don’t be such a big, bad bear,” Jones said with a laugh. “But they have a different responsibility and that’s to their stockholders. We just have the responsibility to offer a helping hand.”

And the families respond to that, Jones said.

Ruth Ortiz, the other homeowner celebrated on Oct. 3, paid off her mortgage with Habitat in nine years by doubling up on payments and often injecting whatever extra cash — like income tax refunds — she had. A single mother, she raised two girls while working in a few supermarkets over the years since leaving her husband and moving to McAllen from Dallas.

“I wouldn’t spend on other things so I could make my payments,” Ortiz said, sitting on a couch she has had for several years in her modest home near Los Encinos Park in South McAllen. “No new cars, no expensive clothes, no eating out. Basically, just not spending what you don’t have.”

Or, as her father would say: “Anybody can make money, but it takes someone special to know how to spend it.”

The achievement of homeownership is well worth the sacrifice for these families, who relish the opportunity to raise their children in a place they can call their own, said Jack Tierney, who recently stepped down as executive director of Rio Grande Habitat because of health issues.

Juan and Irma Muñoz raised two daughters and a son at their home. Now, they are raising their grandchildren there, too.

“We wanted something stable for the children: a house, not to go from apartment to apartment,” Irma said. “Thanks to God. We’re very happy. We never envisioned more than what we have.”

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Nick Pipitone covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4446.