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Hernando Today

Home, Sweet (Habitat) Home

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: November 17, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - The spider plant made it feel like home.

"I grew that in my apartment, waiting for this day," Christine Rideout said last week as she stood on the front porch of her new house, admiring the hearty beast of a plant she nursed from, as she put it, "an itty-bitty one."

Nearby, lilies pushed up from fresh soil, while potted yellow bromeliads waited their turn.

Rideout, 45, and her 18-year-old daughter Lexi have a lot of landscaping freedom now. They are the beneficiaries of Habitat for Humanity Hernando's latest project.

"It's so great," Lexi said, smiling from behind massive sunglasses. "It really, really is."

The family moved last week into their new home on Boca Raton Street, off California Street.

Rideout, who worked as an animal control officer and rented a house in Towanda, N.Y., picked Hernando County during an Internet search. It was close to Tampa, but had a lower cost of living. They moved in 2004.

But the wages were even lower than she expected. Rideout, who has two grown daughters who no longer live at home, took a job with a mining company in Webster, and decided a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Spring Hill would have to do for her and Lexi.

Rideout applied on a whim for a Habitat home in November 2005. She'd always thought they were only for families that had suffered some kind of disaster. Her application was accepted.

Habitat provides a no-interest home loan for the mortgage amount. Habitat homeowners have to put in 300 hours of "sweat equity," working on their own homes as well as other Habitat projects.

Habitat's Hernando chapter owns nearly two dozen lots in the neighborhood off California Street, but raises enough money to build about two houses a year.

The Rideouts are the sixth Habitat project there and would still be waiting if not for help from a national Lutheran organization and from six local Lutheran churches, said Bill Yoos, the chapter's vice president.

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a values-based, nonprofit membership organization, has partnered with Habitat to Humanity and helped pay for homes throughout the country. Thrivent paid $70,000 toward the Rideouts' home, the organization's first partnership with the Hernando chapter.

A coalition of Lutheran churches in the county - First Lutheran, Nativity, Forest Oaks, Holy Cross, Holy Trinity and Christ Lutheran - donated about $14,000 and a good bit of labor.

The Hernando chapter covered the rest of the roughly $108,000 price tag of the Rideouts' home and associated costs.

The assistance from Thrivent and the local churches pushed up the Rideouts' moving date by nearly a year, Yoos said.

The Rideouts enhanced their home improvement skills, something they say will serve them well as they work to keep up their new place.

"We're very precise and don't have to re-cut," Christine said. "We can wield a hammer. We don't like laying tile."

The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home is only a couple of hundred square feet larger than their apartment, but the sense of freedom is immeasurable, they said.

The need to hunt for a parking place is over. The driveway is plenty big.

So, too, is the laundry-laden trip to the complex's community washers and dryers ($1 per load on each). They have their own machines.

And Lexi, a freshman at Pasco-Hernando Community College, can sit on the porch and dish with her friends without worrying that an apartment manager will tell them to hush.

All for a mortgage payment that is less than the monthly rent on their former apartment.

Christine, who now sells jewelry and operates a Web site where visitors can purchase greeting cards, says she plans to volunteer for Habitat, helping counsel recipients going through the program.

When asked how long she'll enjoy the house full-time before getting a place of her own, Lexi looked at her mother and smiled mischievously.

"Oh," she said, "I'm staying forever."

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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