Birmingham Housing Authority program gives residents path to goals and dreams
Beverly Fields stands in front of her home. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr./Alabama NewsCenter)
Ten people who completed the Housing Authority of the Birmingham District’s (HABD) Family Self-sufficiency (FSS) program were recognized Feb. 4 in a graduation ceremony at the Smithfield Court gymnasium.
Each completed a five-year contract with HABD to identify educational, personal and professional goals. A program coordinator helped each to develop an action plan. That Birmingham Housing Authority plan outlined specific activities and services – including education, job training, social services, business development and financial counseling – to achieve their goals.
Here are three of their stories:
‘I love my home’
Beverly Fields rises each morning, says her prayers and brews a pot of coffee. The Bessemer resident opens her blinds and pulls back the curtains in her kitchen.
Later, Fields takes a seat on her back porch, sipping coffee and absorbing the new day.
“I love my home,” she said. “I am a proud FSS participant who went on to succeed and achieve what I wanted in life.”
Fields had rented through the Section 8 program. Now she is a homeowner.
“I always wanted to thrive and do more and not just lean on the system to take care of us,” said Fields, who has three adult sons and is a proud grandmother. “I advise anyone to attend those classes and those workshops. I am a living witness. I found the house of my dreams.”
Now she wants to pull up carpet, get hardwood floors refinished and walls painted.
‘It is home’
Three-year-old Jayleon Jackson is a perpetual motion machine in his Tuxedo Terrace home. He pushes aside a keyboard to slam dunk a ball through a goal before lying on the carpeted floor.
“It’s his house,” his mother Misha Hargrove said with a laugh. “I just pay the bills. He has the run of the house. He can tell you where anything and everything is in this house.”
The single mother and her son moved into the lease-purchase property a year ago and Hargrove makes it clear it’s more than a house to them.
“It is home,” she said. “I love my house.”
Whe she was 24, Hargrove broke several laws, including theft of property, identity theft and cashing a worthless check. That produced an obstacle to her dream of attending nursing school.
She felt defeated by her circumstances then, but not now.
“Now if there’s something that I want, I go for it,” she said. “They can only tell me yes or no. It doesn’t stop me from applying for different positions.”
‘Don’t give up’
Leanita Johnson says she found great inspiration in the FSS program meetings. That inspiration spurred her to establish her cosmetology business, leasing space at Etheridge Brothers downtown.
“I had my own salon and I closed it down after I gave my dad one of my kidneys,” she said. “I’m going to move on up a little more and pursue the salon again.”
Johnson is an assistant at Harris Homes Community Center. She was helped greatly by knowing that other people believe in her.
“I knew they were people of faith,” she said of the FSS staffers. “That’s what really moved me, to give me more motivation and inspiration to move. I saw how faithful and dedicated they were to the program.
“I know the best is still yet to come.”
Johnson said her journey was not without challenges, but she remained focused. She gives others the same advice that she followed.
“Don’t give up. Keep pursuing the dream that God has given you,” she said. “It doesn’t matter the obstacles. What’s for me is for me and know that God is leading me to a better place.”
Other graduates
Other FSS program graduates honored were Cecelia Williams, Tanisha Simmons, Della Wilborn, Godefroid Tshibangu, Sara Bracy, Jacquelin Harrell and Jessica Gilbert-Jenkins.
Tshibangu passed away but his wife, Veronique Kamuanya, represented him at the ceremony. Williams was absent because she was on the job as a school bus dispatcher.
