When the work wraps, Elouise and Joe Thompson will have a new roof, a rebuilt porch, a repaved walkway, new windows, and a new heater. Work crews also made some electrical repairs.
All in, the improvements would have cost upwards of $15,000, a prohibitive amount that had the couple looking into senior living communities years before they had envisioned making that move.
With the help from Habitat, they can now stay in the home they’ve shared for two decades, and eventually pass the property onto their children, some of whom they raised there.
“I’m very glad and very pleased that I’m able to stay here just a little bit longer,” said Eloise Thompson, 67, a longtime social worker with the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging.
Joe Thompson, 90, who served with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s, said he’s grateful for all of the repairs, but most immediately the heater, which was on its last legs and just barely got them through last winter.
He said trying to squeeze more life out the system simply wasn’t an option.
“That was impossible,” Thompson said.
