Championing Homeownership: Dee Williams’s Commitment to Expanding Access in Maine 

A client came to The Neighborhood Developers (TND) in Chelsea, Massachusetts 12 years ago to get help applying for SNAP benefits. In the years that followed, the client returned to the NeighborWorks network organization again and again: First to visit after they had gotten a job earning $13 an hour. Then for a visit to meet with a financial coach. Then to attend a workshop on creating a household budget. 

This week, NeighborWorks America welcomed more than 1,200 community development practitioners from across the country to the NeighborWorks Training Institute, the premier professional learning event for community development and affordable housing professionals in the country. The event was held in Philadelphia, known as the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. 

Jacqueline Pata, executive director of Haa Yakaawu Financial Corp., and her daughter, Jamie Gomez, stood side by side. “Tsu héidei shugax̱tootáan, yáa yaa ḵ̱oosgé daakeit, haa jeexʼ a náḵ̱,” they sang in Tlingit, blessing the chartering ceremony for the organization as they officially joined the NeighborWorks network. 

Nobody wins when the family feuds.

Let me tell you a story about a house. 

Not just any house — but the big house. The house where my cousins spent summers running barefoot through the yard, where Sunday dinners stretched late into the evening, filled with laughter and the smell of southern cooking and my great-aunt’s White Diamonds perfume. A house full of memories, history and love. 

And then, it became a legal battlefield. 

Ashley Hagen and her husband raise cattle and small crops on a farm they purchased through a “contract for deed" in rural South Dakota. Their land included a small home, where they lived with their three sons. “We kept plastic on the windows and even then, you could feel the breeze,” Hagen says. “The foundation was crumbling.”