Home Ownership Course

February 29th, 2016

Today, I was able to return the art that was created by grades 4,5 and 6 at Oxford-on-Rideau Public School. Their art was produced during my workshop on rural poverty and affordable housing in order to raise awareness about these issues in our community. Their flags were displayed at Geronimo Coffee House for the month of February, during the Share the Love campaign. I was very excited to bring the flags back to the school so the students can bring them home and share them with their parents.

During the Share the Love meeting at The Branch Restaurant on February 22nd, Mario Zambonin, the new manager of our ReStore in Kemptville talked about the importance of home ownership and the stability it provided for children. His feedback really made me think. As a child, we moved every 2-3 years and we always rented. I remember feeling that our living arrangements were temporary. I couldn't paint or decorate my walls in a way that might damage the paint. If something broke, we had to call the landlord. Sometimes, if a neighbour wasn't looking after his or her apartment, all of us had to get fumigated due to an infestation in their house. You could hear the neighbours argue. I recall a particular neighbour when I was seven years old. The man beat his girlfriend. She would hit the wall so hard that our apartment shook. It was upsetting to hear him yell at her and to hear her screams as she tried to get away or as she hit the wall. Hearing a grown woman cry was stressful and confusing to me. There is no privacy when you live in a cheaply built apartment.

The cleanliness of the lobby and hallways is up to the building owner. The landscaping and maintenance also reflect decisions made by the building's owner. The same goes for the maintenance of the building's elevators. You can never just take action and get a situation resolved because it's never your place, you're just passing through. As a child, you are aware that you are living among people. You can't jump too hard or too long because there are neighbours downstairs. You can't play your music too long because the neighbours might complain. Bouncing a ball off the wall? Also a bad idea.

When I moved into my first home, I had to learn to be a homeowner. It wasn't just a matter of paying the down payment, setting money aside for taxes or covering the cost of utilities. It didn't occur to me until winter approached that I would need to hire someone to plough our driveway and that, next Spring, I'd need to find someone to mow the lawn. I had no idea there was a filter that needed to be changed for the furnace in the basement. I learned to maintain our home and develop pride of ownership. If there was something I didn't like about our home, I could change it or hire someone to help me. If there was ice on my driveway, I was the one responsible for coating the ice with salt or sand. If something broke, I had to figure out how to fix it or hire someone to do it.

My husband and I now own our second home and I no longer feel trepidation when I decide to paint my walls or hang a shelf. I have learned to tile floors, paint walls and ceilings, use a lawn mower, shovel a driveway, change the furnace filter, replace the water softener and have taxes included in my mortgage so the tax bill doesn't come as one big chunk. People who grew up with home owning parents are used to this but all of it is new to people like me who lived in run down apartments.

As Mario talked about the importance of home ownership, I reflected on this learning and thought it would be worthwhile to teach a Home Ownership course. It's great to help a family become home owners but it's important to ease the transition to new habits and a different mindset to ensure their comfort and success as a home owning family. Just like you adults can benefit from learning about their cars when they earn their license, skills like changing a tire, checking fluids, boosting a battery etc, home owners can learn how to care for, maintain and perform simple fixes to their home. Food for thought!

Anne Walsh
www.artnsoul.org