Pursuing the dream: "This will be my home"

LaTasha Taylor always wanted a home of her own. "It was a security thing," she says. "I wanted to feel like I owned something, like I worked hard for something. I wanted to bring up my kids in their own home."

 

A single mother whose five children range in age from 3 to 18, Taylor has lived in different types of housing over the years. When her oldest son was born, she was 18, she says, and they lived with her grandmother. Then she and her son moved to Section 8 housing for low-income residents. 

 

In time, she got a steady job and gained control of her finances. In 2011, she decided to "pass the baton" and leave the Section 8 housing program to people who needed it more than she did. She rented a townhouse, but what she really wanted was a home where she and her kids could be comfortable, where they could paint the rooms whatever color they wanted, where a family member in need of a place to stay could come and stay without her worrying that she was violating a lease agreement. Her grandmother had owned a home, she says, but it was foreclosed upon after her grandmother died 11 years ago. For Taylor, the dream of owning a home remained.

 

Two years ago, Taylor, who works in care management at Oregon Health & Science University, discovered the Portland Housing Center, a NeighborWorks organization. There, she learned about Portland's Preference Policy Program, with its goal of homeownership for people who had been displaced by urban renewal in Inner Northeast Portland. To qualify, Taylor had to include three of her previous addresses in Northeast and some family history. Meanwhile, learning and coaching at Portland Housing Center began.

 

Peg Malloy, executive director and founder of Portland Housing Center, says her organization has helped 39 new homeowners through the Preference Policy Program so far, with nearly 300 in the pipeline. Even with COVID and historic job losses, she says, people are continuing to buy houses. "Our counselors are overbooked."
 

Ninety percent of the participants in Portland's Preference Policy Program are Black. It was mostly Black residents who had been displaced by gentrification in Northeast, Malloy says. The program "is to acknowledge the displacement by urban renewal of Black communities and is a first step toward reparation and the wealth creation that was lost to the Black community."

 

For two years, Taylor worked hard to become "mortgage ready." She took on a second job at Safeway, working extra shifts to build up her savings.

There were hiccups, like when her car needed a new transmission, which wiped out her savings, emphasizing what she already knew: An emergency savings account was crucial. She built it up again. Meanwhile, through the Preference Policy Program, she qualified for $90,000 in down payment assistance and $10,000 for remodeling and improvements. The program is funded through tax increment funds from the city of Portland raised through the Inner Northeast/North urban renewal area. Taylor received another $20,000 in assistance by qualifying for the NeighborhoodLIFT program, a collaboration between NeighborWorks America and Wells Fargo.

 

Taylor was with her two youngest children when she and Debra Neal, her real estate agent and a board member for the Portland Housing Center, walked into a beige, four-bedroom house in North Portland. \

Saniyah and Sarai began exploring right away.

"Mom, we have a fireplace."

"This is my room."

 

"When we stepped in this house," Taylor says, "it was feeling like ‘this will be my home.' A weight lifted off my shoulders."

 

She signed the contract. But in late March, she began to feel under the weather. It was just a cold, she thought. She was run down from working 60 hours a week, from not getting enough sleep. When she got to her cash register at Safeway, she wiped down her station. "Then I put my head down. I felt dizzy and flushed." A coworker noticed; her supervisor told her to go home and rest. The next morning, she hurt from head to toe, but she attended a remote staff meeting for her job at OSHU. Her manager suggested in the chat that she talk to occupational health. Soon after, she forwarded her symptions to her primary care physician and soon after that, she was taking a COVID test. Two days later, her test came back positive.

 

"That's when I freaked out," Taylor says, pictured above left with four of her five children. "I said, ‘what about my kids? And I'm supposed to close on a house.'"

 

She quarantined in her room. Family checked in on them. Her son was part of a mentoring program called Friends of the Children. They helped. Church helped. Safeway made sure they had groceries. 

 

Taylor stayed in her room and concentrated on breathing. When she inhaled, she says, it felt like a chemical reaction inside her chest. It wasn't until mid-April, just before her house closing, that she started to feel normal. They moved in on May 15.  

 

On June 19th – Juneteenth, a day to celebrate Black culture and achievement – she waited for someone from Portland Housing Center to come by to take a photo of her in front of her new house. But there was more than one person standing in her front yard. Everyone who had helped make buying her home possible was there, Taylor says. Shalonda Menefee, her housing counselor, and Malloy, PHC's director. There were board members and a singer and her real estate agent, all celebrating her home ownership. They presented Taylor with dinner and other housewarming gifts, purchased from Black-owned businesses in Portland.

 

"It filled my heart that they were celebrating me and the accomplishment I had," Taylor says. "To do it on Juneteenth with everything going on in the world today, it meant a lot. My heart was so full." She says owning a home is a type of freedom.

 

"I want to see the Preference Policy Program grow," Malloy says. "I think this is the social justice response to what's going on right now: Black homeownership and wealth creation." She says they wanted to congratulate Taylor, who worked so hard to buy her home. "It's great to show what this program can do," she says. "It's changing the life of a family."

 

Taylor's youngest children now have a teal bedroom. Ki'Mya, 10, has a pink room with unicorns. Taylor painted an accent wall in her living room. It's purple, her favorite color. And she plans to turn part of her garage into a sitting area. 

 

Meanwhile, she continues to budget, but tries to enjoy life at the same time. She still has bills from two emergency room trips during COVID. And she still has her second job at Safeway, which she says she'll keep while she tries to again rebuild her emergency savings account.

 

Her takeaways from her classes at the Portland Housing Center include:

Malloy says she hopes Taylor's story will help inspire others to move toward home ownership, especially Black Portland residents and especially now, during the renewed fight for racial equity. "The takeaway for me right now is in the context of today," Malloy says. "This is the kind of program that needs to get private and public resources so more people can buy homes like LaTasha and her family, who were clearly kept from any kind of wealth accumulation in their family history. This is what needs to happen. I'd like to see home ownership and wealth creation be a part of what comes next."

 

Taylor adds, "I want others, no matter what ethnicity or background or age, to know that if home ownership is something they want, they should have the self-discipline and go for it. At first, I didn't think it was going to happen – a single mother with five kids. But I did it. And I really love my house."
 

Everything is about sacrifices, Taylor says. For a time, she's had to give up hanging out with her friends so that she could work more hours and bring herself to the next level. The result? "Creating stability and building a foundation," she says. "Never give up on yourself or your dreams."