Sunday, September 12, 1999
House changed mother's life
BY EARNEST WINSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
ELSMERE — On a summer morning, Carol Manning sits in her dining room. It's her favorite room in the one-story, gray house clad in vinyl siding.
She has spent hours here in the nine years she's called the house home. In this room, she shared many meals with her parents before they died. Now, she spends time here playing board games and cards with her youngest son, Henry.
It may be just one room, but it's a key part of the house at Garvey and Floral avenues that she says changed her life and strengthened her faith in God.
The year is 1990. Carol Manning is depressed and worried. She doesn't know if she will ever be able to afford her ownhome. She and her four children live with her parents in Fort Thomas. She's lived there most of her life.
She's a single mother. Henry's chronic seizure disorder means he needs constant care, which has made it impossible for her to keep a steady job.
Enter Northern Kentucky Habitat for Humanity. The program, with its sweat equity investment and low-cost mortgage, allowed Ms. Manning to move her family to a home of her own.
She meets the monthly $190 payments on her 20-year, $29,000 mortgage from her Social Security Disability checks.
It's made all the difference in the world, she says. “There is nobody who can tell me this (house) is not a gift from God,” says Ms. Manning, 50, who recently earned her General Equivalency Diploma (GED). “There's not a day that goes by (when) I don't ride down the street and when I pull in say, "I love my little house.'
“I'm happy. I have peace. Jesus was working when he put me here,” she says. “I have better relationships with my children, because before I felt like I couldn't take care of them because I couldn't afford it.”
The house gave the whole family security, says Ms. Manning's oldest daughter, Tracy Manning, 31, who now lives in Burlington but shared the family home on Garvey Avenue for two years before she moved. That, in turn, gave everybody higher self-esteem.
For Tracy, that translated into the confidence to return to school and earn her GED.
“It gave everybody a chance to set a goal for themselves,” Tracy says.
The best part, Tracy says, was the change in her mother.
“My happiness came out of watching her grow with that house,” said Tracy.
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