Media Coverage

Habitat for Humanity builds in Townsend

By Mary Jo Hill, Worcester Telegram & Gazette

November 12, 2007 TOWNSEND - Habitat for Humanity is preparing to build its first house in Townsend, one that will be home to three generations of a family that came to the United States from Albania.

The four-bedroom home will be built at 14 Apple Drive in "a wonderful neighborhood," said Megan J. Foley, executive director of Habitat for Humanity North Central Massachusetts. Six members of the Baboci family will eventually move into the house.

They have been living in cramped quarters in a two-bedroom apartment in Townsend, a community in which they've made their home for most of the nine years since they immigrated to the United States from Tirana, Albania.

Teuta Baboci said they moved here for a better life. "When we came here we didn't know how to speak English, you know," Mrs. Baboci said. But they soon met many friends, she said. "There are wonderful people here," Mrs. Baboci said.

Teuta Baboci and her husband, Ndricim, will live in the house with Lumturije Totraku, Teuta's mother, and the couple's three children, 9-year-old Ramadan, 7-year-old Leah and 5-year-old Alban.

Mrs. Baboci said she found out about Habitat through a table set up by the organization in Townsend during summer concerts, and she applied for a house.

"You know, I love this. This is such a good opportunity for people like my husband and I," she said. They don't mind at all that they have to put in sweat equity by working on the house, she said.

The family saw a Habitat house that had been completed in Gardner, and the reality of their own home began to sink in for her children, she said. One room was painted purple, and her daughter wants the same color in her room, Mrs. Baboci said.

Yesterday, the Townsend project got a ceremonial start with a groundbreaking ceremony.

"It was like a real thing," Mrs. Baboci said about seeing the project starting to come to life.

"It's official. It's beautiful," she said.

Mr. Baboci works at a stone quarry. Mrs. Baboci provides child care on Sunday mornings at a church, Ms. Foley said.

"We are happy we are here," Mrs. Baboci said. "At least he can go to work every day."

In Albania, jobs are very difficult to come by, she said.

Building will start this year. The completion date is scheduled for spring or summer, Ms. Foley said in an interview last week.

The Habitat director said the town has been very cooperative with the project and donated the property for the house. "The town has been wonderful," she said.

The organization had some unusual funding to help the project, Ms. Foley said. It received $20,000 from Townsend Congregational Church, the largest gift the chapter has received from a church, she said. The money came from a capital campaign held by the church a couple of years ago in which some of the donations were earmarked for this project, she said.

A Friends Project also contributed $31,000 to the house, Ms. Foley said. A young couple raised the money for Habitat from their friends and family, she said.

A small but determined local partner committee, headed up by Michele Cannon and Don Ouellette, has raised money and in-kind donations, she said.

To buy a Habitat house, a family needs a steady source of income to pay the interest-free mortgage, Ms. Foley said. "They're like everybody else. They're paying a mortgage that's proportionate with their income," she said.

The Baboci family have the economic need and the housing need to qualify them for the home, Ms. Foley said.