Volunteers help give family a new home

Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Home News

Habitat for Humanity volunteer Rodney Stephens balances himself on a the frame of a wall while working on a home being built for Rosa Santana on London Porter Court Saturday morning by Habitat for Humanity Las Vegas, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors and Citibank.

By Jeff Pope (contact)

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009 | 4:15 p.m.

Rosa Santana prays every day that no one shows up to evict her and her three teenage children from the home they rent.

The house in the southwest part of the valley is in foreclosure, but Santana has not heard from her landlord in a while.

The family needs a few more months until their own house is completed by volunteers of Habitat for Humanity.

About 70 teens from the organization's youth group worked alongside 50 volunteers from Citibank and the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors on Saturday to raise the frames into place on the Santanas' new home on London Porter Court in Silverado.

The three-bedroom, two-bath house is the last piece Santana said she needs to have a good life. She emigrated from the Dominican Republic five years ago, found a steady job as a housekeeper at St. Rose Dominican Hospitals-San Martin Campus, and recently bought a new car.

"I have my house and my family nice," she said. "I'm very excited."

Santana's home is the first of four that Habitat for Humanity will build in the neighborhood off Tamarus Street, north of Warm Springs Road.

It should be ready for the family in June or July. By then, the organization will have started on at least one other home.

Habitat for Humanity Las Vegas builds single-family homes throughout Clark County for working families earning less than 60 percent of the area median income. The home is sold at no profit through a no-interest mortgage.

It was the first house DeShauna Jeffery ever built.

"I feel like we did something nice for someone who needs it and did it in the right way," said Jeffery, who works for Citibank.

For 13-year-old Jeremie Whiting, Santana's house was the seventh that he's worked on since joining the Habitat for Humanity's Youth United program last year.

Whiting moved into his own house built by the organization in December. Until then, Whiting lived in a motel with his mother, grandmother and 3-year-old sister.

"It wasn't real at first, but when the dedication came, it's like, 'We're really getting a house,'" he said.

Jeff Pope can be reached at 990-2688 or jeff.pope@hbcpub.com.