Nine Goshen Families Achieve the Dream of Owning a Home

Nine Goshen Families Achieve the Dream of Owning a Home

Posted on June 12, 2015

On June 12, 2015, Self-Help Enterprises officially recognized and welcomed nine Goshen families who completed the construction of their own home. These hardworking families spent the last nine months helping each other build their new, safe, affordable home.

For Elizabeth Vargas, the sense of accomplishment also means building a better future. ““It was a little scary in the beginning because I had never even worked with a construction tools. It’s a lot of work, but in the end it’s worth it,” she said. “Now that I own my own home, I can continue with school and I know that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to.”

Elizabeth Vargas with her certificate of completion for building her own home.

Self-Help Enterprises operates the largest mutual self-help homeownership program in the country. Since 1965, Self-Help Enterprises has helped more than 6,100 families in the San Joaquin Valley build their own homes and participate in the American dream of homeownership. The single-family homes are all built under the mutual self-help method of construction with homeowners providing over 70 percent of the construction labor. These labor hours, or “sweat equity”, are used as the down payment on their new home that, together with low-interest mortgage financing through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, reduces the costs for a new home they otherwise could not afford.

Self-Help Enterprises’ emphasis on sustainable homeownership, combining counseling and education, an affordable mortgage, and the sweat equity down payment, has resulted in successful homeownership for thousands of Valley families. Families not only build their homes and those of their neighbors, they also build an instant community, a sense of place, and skills that will last a lifetime.

The completion of the latest nine homes brings a total of 122 homes to Goshen since the first self-help houses were constructed in Goshen in 1963. The construction of the nine homes also marks the completion of the first subdivision with 77 homes on land donated to Self-Help Enterprises by the Doe family, long-time supporters of Self-Help Enterprises who desired to contribute to the future of families and children in Goshen. The donated 40-acre land also includes the 10-acre Peter Malloch Park and the 56 unit Goshen Village II apartment rental community – both developed by Self-Help Enterprises.

Congratulations to the new homeowners!