From Nearly Homeless To New Homeowners
Alexandria Group Trains Immigrants to Make the Jump

By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006

The real estate agent's sign is still planted in the lawn outside the gray, two-story duplex on Riverview Terrace where the window boxes brim with summer flowers and the paint looks fresh.

Mario Urbina, 23, and his wife, Reina Bermudez, 29, moved in last week, hauling their few possessions -- mostly toys for their year-old daughter, Jasmine -- from a one-bedroom apartment in Arlandria to this house near the Huntington Metro station in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County.

It was a moment of triumph for Urbina, a bricklayer who emigrated from El Salvador in 2003. The following year, his new bride joined him in Alexandria. Together, the two of them had just enough money to rent a single room in a crowded house. They were barely making ends meet when Bermudez became seriously ill and stopped working as a babysitter. Urbina stayed home to care for his wife, and their meager income plummeted.

Though they weren't living on the streets, they were effectively homeless, at least in the eyes of Community Lodgings Inc., an Alexandria-based nonprofit group that provides, among other programs, affordable and transitional housing to help lift families from financial chaos to self-sufficiency.

In the past year, the program has helped two of its participating families graduate from transitional housing, which is owned by Community Lodgings and provided to tenants with a large rent subsidy, to owning their own homes.

Bermudez and Urbina were one of those couples. They showed up at the group's community learning center on Notabene Street in Arlandria last year seeking help. They needed housing -- they were renting a bedroom in a group house for $500 a month -- and they wanted to learn computer skills. Perhaps their most difficult hurdle was that neither spoke English.

Officials with Community Lodgings said they were perfect candidates for the organization's transitional program: They were older than 18, had been bouncing from one unstable, crowded living arrangement to another and were in the process of getting their naturalization papers. And Urbina was employed.

"And they had goals," said Meka Jones, the caseworker at Community Lodgings who shepherded the couple through the program. "They wanted to learn how to save money, and they wanted to buy a house. And that's what they did."

The couple took night classes administered by Community Lodgings, learning basic computer skills and, in Urbina's case, becoming proficient in English. (Although for this story he preferred to be interviewed through an interpreter.)

In a year, they managed to save $2,500, enough to consider home-buying classes at the Hispanic Committee of Virginia.

It took the couple a while to find the right house. Most were too expensive. In a few cases, the financing changed before they sat down to close the deal. But last month they found what they had been looking for -- a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a finished basement for Bermudez to one day set up a day-care operation, and a spacious back yard for Jasmine.

"I'm so proud of them!" gushed Jones as she took her first tour of the $379,500 house last week. Urbina's brother co-signed the loan and, according to Jones, will help pay the monthly mortgage of $2,800.

Urbina, who is employed with a Manassas-based construction company, makes $18.50 an hour, enough, he said, to cover his part of the bills with the help of Bermudez, who has returned to baby-sitting.

"It's not going to be easy," Urbina said, sitting on a large plastic Lego container in the couple's sparsely furnished living room. "But with a lot of willpower and discipline, we can pay it."

Bermudez said that a year ago she and her husband couldn't have imagined owning a place of their own. Now Urbina said they hope to one day add a backyard deck and make other improvements that will allow them to sell the house for a profit and move back to El Salvador to be with family.

Community Lodgings was established in 1987 to provide transitional and low-income housing to residents in the Arlandria area. It owns five apartment buildings, which provide 34 low-income apartments and 12 transitional units to those who qualify and commit to one year of financial and life-skills counseling.

Officials said they recruit some of their clients from homeless shelters. Residents selected for transitional housing put 30 percent of their income toward rent. The rest is subsidized by Community Lodgings, which has an annual housing budget of $600,000 to $700,000 and spends about $25,000 a year on each transitional housing family.

Others have come to know Community Lodgings through the Fifer Family Learning Center on Notabene Street in Arlandria. It offers computer classes, English and math lessons and after-school programs for children referred by their teachers.

Open Monday through Saturday, the learning center is often packed. Adult students double up, two to a computer, for evening classes (there is always a waiting list) to enhance their chances at better jobs, and kids flop on pillows in the small reading room to thumb through the stack of children's books.

At first glance, the bookshelf in the entry hall filled with colorful board games looks like a child's paradise -- until you scrutinize the titles, such as "Sunken Suffixes," "Prefix Pitfall" and "Adjective Silly Circus."

A poster on the wall encourages kids to "use inside voice," "share" and remember to "have fun."

The nonprofit group struggles each year to find enough money to maintain its services. It is constantly soliciting volunteers and donations. Most of the group's funds come from state and federal grants, foundations, the city and its public school system.

"For so long, we were consumed with just surviving," said Bonnie Baxley, executive director of Community Lodgings. "We hadn't been doing the outreach the group needs to grow."

Other organizations and city programs offer similar outreach. The advantage Community Lodgings has, officials said, is location -- specifically its proximity to the people who need help.

"We have this huge neighborhood of need right here," Baxley said, explaining that residents don't have to get in their cars to seek help. "We have people here who not only can't speak English but are illiterate in their own native language," a particular problem, she said, when it comes to being involved in their children's education. Many of those parents are unable to read even the Spanish-language fliers that are sent home with their children.

"We have staff here from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. to provide support, a place where people walk over and ask, 'What does this say?' " Baxley said.

Baxley, who took over as executive director last year, has been on the group's board of directors since 1998. She talks passionately about the specialized, one-on-one help the volunteers and staff provide to neighborhood residents, many of whom are from El Salvador and have little education.

This summer, Community Lodgings staff conducted a survey of 72 neighborhood residents, some of whom they contacted randomly during a door-to-door canvass. Others were interviewed while participating in the group's classes.

Of those surveyed, 40.3 percent said their goal for the near future centered on buying a house, 29.2 percent said they wanted to send a child to college and 12.5 percent said they wanted to complete or get more education.

"Education can be seen both as a barrier and an opportunity," according to the staff report. "The majority of those surveyed did not graduate from high school and do not speak English at home on a regular basis. [But] those same respondents also showed a great willingness to learn and take advantage of educational programs."

Despite their goals, 87.5 percent of those surveyed said they have no savings; 81 percent said they don't keep a budget. Although 75 percent of those polled said they are having financial difficulties, 50 of the 72 people surveyed said they regularly send money home to their country of origin to help relatives.

It's those kinds of problems -- a lack of money management, savings plans and continued education -- that Baxley said Community Lodgings is tackling successfully, one family at a time.

"It's unbelievable what we do," said Baxley, ego absent from her tone. "Other nonprofits are great, but I believe we do more."