Habitat to build first duplex in city

Telegraph-Journal Monday, June 2, 2003
BY MAC TRUEMAN

Not one family but two families will be housed in the project for which Habitat for Humanity, Saint John Region Inc., staged a sod-turning ceremony Sunday.

Rev. Lindsey Burt, in offering a prayer on behalf of one of the families recalled Jesus’ words, “upon the rock I shall build my church.

“The next best thing to building a church on a rock is building a house on a rock,” he said.

But this development will do even better than this: it will build two houses in this same notch cut into the Saint John shale of Brunswick Drive, in the group’s very first tandem housing project.

The $60,000 building will represent houses six and seven for the ecumenical Christian housing organization, which has been building one house per year for the last five years.

The Fourth Engineer Support Regiment is to arrive today from CGB Gagetown to begin construction.

“You’ll definitely be in by the beginning of the next school year,” building committee chairman Tim Ryan told the two families.

“It really hasn’t sunk in yet,” said Tammy Turner, a single mom of four children, who says she has had to move 14 times in the last four years because landlords don’t welcome youngsters.

For her neighbour-to-be Ray Northrup, the irony of his job as a worker in a home improvement store was in knowing he could never afford to build a house like the ones for which he sells materials, not until now.

“And I’ve loaded up lumber for many a house,” he added.

As they spoke in interviews, their children – seven in total – climbed through the rubble of shale, playing in a puddle and kicking bits of rock.

“Hey, Teena,” Ben Turner shouted to his sister, “If you go up 20 feet, you’ll be in your room.”

“They’re a already making a mess,” Bonnie Northrup said.

The families who will live here are Ms. Turner and her children Ben, 16, Willy, 14, Teena, 12 and Jacob,9; and the Northrups and their three girls, Tiffany, 11, Brittany, 8 and Naiomi, 6.

The Saint John Habitat group had 18 applicant families this year. To be eligible, a family must be willing to contribute 500 hours of sweat equity and make payments on an interest-free mortgage.