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A Client for Life
The process unfolds

It's a letter Tracy Morris will never forget.

Almost a year after Tracy completed NHS Phoenix's Homebuyer Education classes, she received a follow-up letter inquiring if she had made a home purchase but, more importantly, reminding her that to NHS Phoenix she "will always be a client for life." With that, she made an appointment with NHS Phoenix's housing counselor and three months later, in May 2003, walked through the front door of her newly built home.

The "event" that led Morris to enroll in Homebuyer Education classes in 2002 was a discussion with her landlord, Kim van der Veen, about the unlikelihood of ever finding both an affordable and beautiful house. Van der Veen knew about affordable housing. She has served on the non-profit NHS Phoenix Board of Directors for eight years and knew that NHSP was the right place to help Tracy get the house she wanted.

Morris had no idea what would come from taking Homebuyer Education, she recalls. All she did know was she had seen an older neighborhood, not far from where she was renting, and that was the place she wanted to live. She felt the classes had explained the homebuying process so well that she didn't have to worry about anything.

Over the next several months, she searched the Internet each day for available homes and worked with a realtor but nothing panned out. And just when it seemed like her dream would not happen, the NHS Phoenix letter arrived.

Tracy remembers the day she walked back into NHS Phoenix's offices. "I wasn't sure what I was doing there and I started to cry." An hour later, her tears of confusion turned to tears of joy. Maria, her housing counselor, informed her she qualified for a loan, and three yet-to-be-built NHS Phoenix houses were options for her as well. Tracy was "floored." Without knowing, Maria had just presented three addresses in the exact neighborhood where Morris wanted to buy.

The NHS Phoenix staff was there to assist every step of the way, Tracy relates. "Even with the little, silly things I never had to think about as a renter-How do I pay for water? Sewer? Who sprays for bugs!" "Everything just unfolded perfectly," she goes on, "I just had to keep packing and believing it was going to happen."

Tracy is not alone in her excitement. Her son, Zachery, age 9, and her daughter, Maci, age 11, are thrilled to have their own, "so big" rooms. "Zach couldn't stop playing with the garage door opener," laughs Tracy. And Abby, her 3-year-old Great Dane/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix adopted from the Humane Society, is "excited about having her own yard," states Tracy. "The day we walked into our home for the first time, Abby went into every single room, came back, looked up at me, and if could talk, I know was saying, 'Is this really ours?'"

For Tracy that day will always be memorable. She kept note of "my first night's sleep; my first pot of coffee; my first sunrise on my back porch. But the best thing is, I know I have a really long time to unpack!"

Three days after moving in, as Tracy was leaving NHS Phoenix's offices, a young couple came through the door. The receptionist smiled and asked, "Do you have an appointment?" "No," the young man stated, "but I understand this is the place to come if you want a house."

As Tracy Morris went out the door, her confident smile silently said it all: You are in the right place. Trust the process and it will happen for you too!

Written by R.A.Lenio; photos by M. Rooney