A Habitat home for the holidays

BRAINERD — This Christmas for the Spaid family will be a joyous one.

It’s the first they’ll spend in their new Brainerd house, courtesy of Habitat for Humanity.

In the days leading up to Christmas, 10-year-old Everlee couldn’t wait to open presents with her family on Christmas morning and was looking forward to, among other things, spending the day with the new puppies her family recently welcomed.

“How wonderful this Christmas is going to be in an actual house,” Everlee said Tuesday, Dec. 17, while sitting in her new bedroom, complete with “Bluey” sheets on the bed and a cozy spot for two of the family tuxedo cats, Kirill and Chase.

Tim Speier / Brainerd Dispatch

Before the Habitat for Humanity house, Everlee and her family — parents Sean and Amy and 8-year-old sister Sage — lived in a two-bedroom trailer home near Nokay Lake. Neither the door to get in the trailer nor the hallways were wide enough to accommodate the wheelchair Everlee uses because of her cerebral palsy.

Instead, she crawled.

“She did prefer crawling at that time, but it’s not the best for her,” Sean said. “And then she would go to a W-sit (where a child sits on their bottom with their knees bent and feet to the sides of their hips), which is worse, and that’s what has actually caused her to have two hip reconstruction surgeries.”

Now she can cruise around the new house with heated floors in her wheelchair at all times, as Sean works to make his daughter’s forever home even more accessible. Chair lifts in her bedroom and bathroom will help with her mobility even more, as Everlee gets older and harder for her parents to lift in and out of bed and the shower.

“I want to make sure she has a place to live forever, that she doesn’t have to worry about finding something accessible,” Sean said.

While the house will be Everlee’s forever, she doesn’t plan to live there alone. She and Sage plan to share the living quarters. The girls are two peas in a pod. Even with their own rooms, Sage prefers to sleep on a trundle bed in Everlee’s room and plans to do so for the foreseeable future.

They shared a room in the trailer home, too. But with so little space for all their possessions, the second bedroom turned into storage, leaving Sean and Amy to sleep on a Murphy bed in the living room.

“It was like living in a tiny house,” Sean said.

“We’ve never been able to host anything,” Amy added.

That changed this year, though, when they hosted family for Thanksgiving and were able to invite the girls’ friends over for visits.

There’s also room for dancing.

“Sometimes me and Sage have dance parties in our wheelchairs,” Everlee said, with her sister making use of the manual wheelchair while Everlee uses the one with the motor.

“We listen to Spotify and just start dancing,” she added.

“I also like how we’re closer to a park now,” Sage piped in.

Not only is the Oak Street house closer to parks and other amenities in Brainerd, it’s also perfectly located for visits from the ice cream truck in the summer.

The bigger kitchen with a full-sized refrigerator is great for cooking, and the bathrooms are one of the biggest pluses, with a roll-in shower that’s able to accommodate Everlee’s wheelchair.

Tim Speier / Brainerd Dispatch

The Spaids moved in almost the instant they could, with the girls wanting to sleep there immediately after signing the papers.

“I was like, ‘All right. I’ll bring a bed, but that’s all we’ve got,’ ” Sean said with a laugh.

The joy that comes along with owning a brand new house is what makes the long hours of work worth it for Kevin Pelkey, executive director of Lakes Area Habitat for Humanity.

“I won’t deny that this is hard work, as is true with any service organization,” he said.

Throw construction and a retail store on top of the other day-to-day duties, and it’s not the easiest job in the world.

“But what we like to refer to as our payday as a program,” Pelkey said, “is when we are able to turn the keys over to the family and watch them become what they are able to become and meant to become in their new homes.”

For him, there’s nothing quite like watching a family learn there is hope in the world when they’re awarded a Habitat for Humanity house.

Tim Speier / Brainerd Dispatch

The house, however, doesn’t come without some work on the family’s part. Those who receive a Habitat home are responsible for at least 300 hours of sweat equity to make it a reality. That work could include helping with construction, raising money for the nonprofit or recruiting other volunteers to help out.

That was no problem at all for the Spaids. Sage and Everlee were happy to help with fundraising and with cleanup between construction phases. And they have plenty of family and friends who volunteered their time in various capacities.

One special helper came all the way from Washington state. A friend Sean made years ago online playing video games didn’t hesitate to aid the family when needed. He was in Minnesota for nearly a year, staying in a camper on the Spaids’ old rural property, helping with construction.

“It was the first time we ever met,” Sean said.

That willingness to help is what Habitat for Humanity is all about. On top of the family’s time, Pelkey estimates it takes about 1,400 volunteer hours to construct a house from start to finish.

“It takes a lot of people to come together for the common purpose of making the community better and providing an opportunity for a family to have a decent home,” he said.

The Spaids’ home was one of three completed in time for Christmas this year. Eight more are under construction in some way, shape or form. Pelkey anticipates six of them being ready to welcome families by next Christmas, with the other two close to completion.

After a home is built, it’s sold back to the family, who pay only what they can afford, which typically amounts to about 25% of income or sometimes less, depending on the circumstances. The family pays on a 30-year term, and Habitat covers the difference between that amount and the appraised value with a forgivable mortgage.

“We think that adding a home in any given neighborhood improves the family’s future and lifts up a neighborhood where maybe nothing’s been done for a build or a rehab or a remodel of a home for a long time,” Pelkey said. “And we love going into those neighborhoods and planting a home in there and improving the stock.”

The next month or two will see the opening of applications for more families to apply for homes.

Lakes Area Habitat for Humanity typically builds about three to five homes a year, with the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic still felt in many ways.

Those interested in donating to Habitat for Humanity don’t have to be skilled craftsmen able to work on a construction site or have deep pockets and be able to give monetarily.

While construction workers are certainly needed, there’s also volunteer work to be done in the nonprofit’s retail store and in soon-to-be-demolished homes when Habitat is invited to collect what they can to refurbish and sell to raise more funds.

“There’s always something that we can connect an interest to help Habitat. Twelve months a year, we have opportunities for people to volunteer,” Pelkey said. “It all leads to the same end of more families in homes.”

Tim Speier / Brainerd Dispatch

That end means mobility and independence for someone like Everlee and a home for the Spaid family to call their own at Christmas.

For more information on how to contribute to Habitat for Humanity’s mission, visit lakesareahabitat.org .

THERESA BOURKE may be reached at [email protected] or 218-855-5860. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DispatchTheresa.