Habitat home better than 'winning the lottery'

WASILLA -- When Jennifer Wilson left Alaska in 1994, she wasn't sure if she would ever be back.

"I decided to give California three years," Wilson said. "I hated California."

Wilson, 53, returned to Alaska with her two grandsons, Jeremy, 16, and Travis, 14, in 1998. The boys' mother was killed in Anchorage in 1995, and Wilson has been raising the boys, along with her six dogs, ever since. She moved to Anchorage when she first returned to the state; a year later she began renting a "glorified cabin" on Lazy Mountain.

"It's a cabin, it's not meant for year-round living," said Wilson when asked to describe her current living conditions. The cabin has no running water, but Wilson said it has been hard finding affordable housing, especially with her dogs.

"They are all old, I can't just get rid of them," she said. "They are like the kids."

Wilson first became eligible for a Habitat for Humanity home in 2000, after a couple of "pushy" friends convinced her to fill out the paperwork. Usually it takes a year to 18 months for a Habitat home to be built in the Valley, but after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, financial donations for the home slowed.

"Understandably so," said Wilson, while discussing the length of the building process. Seemingly unaffected by the delay, Wilson said she is excited that the three-bedroom Williwaw subdivision home is expected to be ready by December.

"I don't think I could be happier if I won the lottery," she said.

The house is built on .23 acres, and Wilson said the payments on the zero-percent financing should be around $450, the same she is paying for the cabin now. Wilson and friends have put in about 130 of the 500 hours of "sweat equity" Habitat recipients are required to put into their homes to purchase it. She said she can't thank Habitat and the local volunteers enough for what they have done for her and her family.

"Every one of them should be nominated for sainthood," Wilson said. "I can't find the words to thank them."