Seventeen, living with friends, no place to call home, and nothing to call his own. That was Joshua Clark when he wound up at the YES Shelter for Youth and Families in Peterborough 12 years ago.
“I had a good head on my shoulders,” he says, “but I didn’t have a lot of breaks. I was completely lost then, emotional and lost. You gotta remember — I was a kid.”
Josh is a success story. Shelter staff quickly noticed his common sense and drive to succeed, and offered him a place to stay at a transition house. He attended school and work programs, eventually succeeding in getting his Grade 12 equivalency and a $2,000 bonus for successfully finishing a work term.
And then he met Natasha Bandi.
“It wasn’t love at first sight,” he says now, “but she was the only girl living there at the time.”
Tasha and Josh both laugh, and the interview is interrupted briefly by their children, Autumn, 10, and Jasmine, 5. The family of four currently lives in an apartment building in the north end of Peterborough, the latest in a long line of places they’ve called home.
But it’s the last “temporary” home they will have, as the Clarks are about to become the new owners of the latest Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region build: a home in Warsaw.
“Obviously, Josh and Natasha have an inspiring story,” says Emily Ferguson, resource development manager for Habitat for Humanity. “The couple’s journey from once using local shelter services to now being months away from homeownership is a true testament to their own capacity to build a better future for their family.”
Ferguson says it was Josh and Tasha’s “sincerity and appreciation” that drew Habitat to the couple.
“They are down to earth, humble and truly thankful for the opportunity,” she adds.
Established locally in 2002, Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region is a non-profit, non-denominational housing organization that helps families build a future by bringing volunteer labour and donations together for a home.
The hand-up comes in the form of a zero per cent interest mortgage, with no down payment, and geared to income monthly payments. Habitat has partnered locally with 28 families; the organization is finishing up the Warsaw home, and close to completing a single-detached home in Lindsay. There are also four more builds planned for Peterborough — the ground-breaking for a single-detached home on Wellington Street is set for May.
Ferguson says the chance to own their own home allows families to build confidence as well as equity, often resulting in an improved financial situation overall.
Tasha and Josh both say, when Habitat for Humanity first showed them the floor plans of the home they would own, they couldn’t believe it was true.
“We kept reminding each other not to get too excited,” Tasha says. “It took a while for it to sink in.”
Since then, Josh has been putting in volunteer hours to help build the home, and to help with Habitat for Humanity’s other volunteer needs. Hard work is nothing new for him. Ever since Tasha became pregnant with their first child, Josh has been working, or looking for work, or both.
He’s worked early mornings at Burger King and he’s worked overnights at Mac’s Milk. He’s also been a delivery driver, a cook, a painter, and a shift manager. For the past five years, Josh has worked at a local mattress company learning the business inside and out, alongside the owner.
Their remarkable story is not lost on them, though.
“When we look back at it now, to those days in the shelter, we were just young kids doing what we needed to do to survive,” he says, recalling the excitement he felt when he first got his own small apartment, and could buy a coffeemaker.
YES executive director Suzanne Galloway worked with Josh when he first arrived at the shelter.
“It’s amazing the progress they’ve made,” she says. “And now, to own their own home. There’s something so profound about owning your own home.”
She says it is heartbreaking and equally inspiring to know that youth who sometimes have so little can be so resilient. And the real hope, she says, comes from knowing that when “we are able to invest in these young people, they really are able to accomplish greatness.”
Together, Josh and Tasha have learned how to be parents — even parenting a child with special needs together — meeting challenge after challenge that comes their way.
Josh does admit that he was discouraged, thinking it would take forever to secure a traditional mortgage. All he and Tasha wanted, they say, was to give their children what they, themselves, never had — a place to call home.
With that goal now a reality, there’s just one more on their list.
“We never got officially married,” Tasha says. “I wanted it to be really special. We thought if we could one day get a house, we would get married in the yard. That’s the last thing on our list.”
