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Better House, Better Health -- Habitat for Humanity Int'l 1
Better House, Better Health
Jill and Rudy Osuna have discovered their Habitat house in Tucson, Ariz., helps them to breathe a little easier.
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Growing up, Jill Osuna and her family moved frequently, but Rudy, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Native American tribe, has an extensive family network in Arizona. When they met at a community dance 13 years ago, Jill figured she was in Tucson to stay. The affordable housing they found in Tucson, Ariz., however, didn’t match the easy comfort they found with each other.
“A lot of people are selling their homes in California and New Mexico and coming here,” she says. “They’re only building houses for $300,000 and up, but the wages around here haven’t moved. Even some middle-income families are having a hard time.”
The apartment Jill and Rudy lived in first had significant challenges. “The door and windows didn’t really fit, so I had a hard time with allergies,” Jill says. “Also, the unit above us had a waterbed or aquarium leak or something, so water seeped down into the walls and caused a lot of mold. I was always sick.”
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Jill and Rudy heard about Habitat through a cousin at the tribe’s housing authority, which had worked with the organization in the past. They paid off some medical bills to clean up their credit and were accepted as homeowners. In the midst of learning about homeownership and completing her sweat equity, Jill was bitten by the Habitat bug—hard. Currently a Habitat homeowner in the Balboa Laguna neighborhood, she also serves as president of the homeowners association and works part-time in the Habitat office as an assistant to the director of accounting.
“I got healthy, I got my asthma under control, and I could go back to work,” she says. “My life has turned around in the last couple of years. … It’s not a freebie, but it is a helping hand, and the donation and sweat make it possible for people to have a home. We’ll never forget all the people who made it possible.”
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