New Ballymun home ‘like winning the Lotto’

DIANE KELLY is ticking off the days until she moves into her new home, which is being built with the help of an American humanitarian group.

“I can’t wait to get in; I got accepted last October. It was like winning the Lotto to be getting out of a flat and building something that is going to be our own.”

Diane’s new apartment is one of four affordable homes being built in Ballymun under a novel partnership with the international Habitat for Humanity organisation.

“I’ve been working on the site. So far I have 338 hours done out of the 500 hours that new home owners invest. I’ve done a lot of painting,” she said.

By Christmas, she and daughter Katie, aged three, expect to have vacated their existing ground floor flat in the north Dublin complex for their brand new home.

“They’re a great group to be with,” said Diane of Habitat. “We all work as a team. There’s all goodness in them.”

Today, 15 US volunteers from Habitat for Humanity begin a two-week stint on the site. A dozen of their American colleagues will be coming in early September to further the work.

Habitat for Humanity is an interdenominational housing and community development charity. Founded less than 30 years ago to make it possible for poor people to own a home, it raised the walls on its 200,001st home in India, devastated by the tsunami last December.

Habitat’s Irish spokesperson Colm Doran explained that Dublin City Council donated the site for the two apartments and two houses.

“These four homes, upon completion, will be purchased by four local families from the Ballymun area who normally would not be able to afford to purchase their own homes. But because Habitat homes are affordable, due to donations of land, funds, services, materials and our volunteer programme, the families can afford to purchase homes.”

Mr Dolan said EBS Building Society had designed a no-profit, affordable mortgage that the Habitat families would avail of.