Habitat representative Cheryl Marsh says most Habitat homes, like Shanarrea Melvin’s, pictured here, are energy efficient and appraised between $100,000 and $125,000.When Shanarrea “Shan” Melvin was 13, her mother passed away. She’d grown up in public housing at East Lake Courts, and then was taken in by an aunt.
She soon changed homes again – this time to the dorms at Baylor School. “I was pretty good with the ball,” Melvin says of what brought her to Baylor, where she was on the volleyball and basketball teams.
When her aunt moved away from Chattanooga, her father couldn’t keep up with the payment arrangement with Baylor, so she went to live with him in Dalton and finished high school at Dalton High.
In May, Melvin, now 28, moved into a home where she can finally put down roots. The single mother of 8-year-old Treylen and 5-month-old Tristen says her life has changed in so many ways since she moved into her Habitat for Humanity home in the Glass Farms area. Currently a customer service agent for Awardcountry.com, a website offering custom medals, awards and plaques that has a physical location in Red Bank, she recently got a job as a 911 dispatcher that she’ll start in a few weeks. Having their own home gives her sons a sense of stability, and Melvin no longer has to worry about whether her heat and air conditioning will work, or if she’ll get slapped with a huge water bill because of the leaking toilet her landlord didn’t fix.
“It’s been a wonderful experience,” she says of Habitat for Humanity. “It’s not only a good program, the people who work there treat you as though you’re family and not just a number. They’re happy you’re going through this process.”