Donald and Elizabeth benefited from Home Repairs for Good’s Home Stabilization Program.
Maintaining a home on a fixed income is difficult. Maintaining a home and caring for your spouse adds to the challenge, but that is what Donald does and he does so with a positive attitude and unwavering determination.
Donald and Elizabeth have been married for 40 years. Donald is 73 years old and retired from McAllister. He is the sole caregiver for his spouse. He notes that Elizabeth, 68 is fiercely independent, and does not want strangers coming into their home. “She doesn’t want to ask for help,” he says. Donald and his wife manage day to day, but it’s not easy. Utilities, property taxes, and car insurance all take a significant part of their limited income.
“You do what you can do and stretch your money,” Donald explains. “But it can only go so far.”
Elizabeth has mobility issues that make it challenging for Donald to get her to the doctor. It doesn’t help that Donald has a few health challenges of his own.
“Things pile up. I can only do so much at my age.” A realistic Donald said. “But I would never let her go into a nursing home.”
Donald and Elizabeth have been in their modest home since 2009. Attention to the roof was long overdue, as Donald says. The roof was estimated at being more than 30 years old. In 2023, the roof began leaking around the chimney. Fortunately, Home Repairs for Good, formerly NeighborLink Indianapolis, was able to help patch the roof and stop that leak. However, like so many home repairs, that leak was just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next year, additional leaks began to develop, and at a more and more rapid pace. Donald knew that “one way or another, I needed to figure something out. I couldn’t catch all of them (the leaks),” he says.
Knowing Home Repairs for Good had helped them once, he gave the number a call again. Thanks to that initiative, he was informed Home Repairs for Good had a new program called Home Stabilization to address larger projects, including roofing. The would just need to go through an additional vetting process that included a bit more paperwork.
“I applied for the program on a Monday. By Wednesday, we were approved,” he exclaims.
The process began in July, and the roof was completed by July 19th. Donald marveled at the efficiency of the roofing crew. In addition to shingles on the main roof, they replaced a flat roof with a rubber roof. The flat roof was in particularly bad shape.
“They spent 14 hours working on the flat roof alone,” he notes.
Home Repairs for Good has been able to stabilize the home and preserve it not only for today, but for the long term. Donald remarks that the roofing crew “were real nice people. They did a great job, and cleaned up the job site every day,” he says.
Donald and Elizabeth now sleep much easier at night and find those summer rain storms soothing rather than stress inducing. We’re so glad we were able to provide them with a new roof.
The Home Stabilization Program (HSP) focuses on a small subset of the homes requesting services to more intensely stabilize them. Often these homes are in need of much larger repairs–a new roof, HVAC, larger plumbing issues, significant electrical repair or rewiring, etc. In 2024 Home Repairs for Good committed to stabilizing 25 homes through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis’ Affordable Housing Program. Learn more about the program here.
Home Repairs for Good uses King & Country Elite Roofing Services for their roof repair requests and have nothing but good things to say about their crew.
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