Testimonials & Success Stories

Finding the direction home

When he came to us in 2008, Manuel Vela was already a success story. He was only 26 and already had a solid, full-time job, a wonderful wife, and a young son. However, Manuel and his family lacked one important thing: a home of their own. In fact, Manuel was living with relatives. “I wanted a buy a home,” said Manuel later, “and I felt like I needed a direction to go in.”

He found a direction in the form of the Valley Individual Development Account (VIDA) program, which provided a $3 match for every $1 of Manuel’s savings towards homeownership. In order to get the match, however, Manuel had to figure out how to save the money he needed for his account. “What made it easier was that I had 30 to 31 days to deposit the money,” he said later. “What was hard was when I waited ‘til the end of the month to make the deposit.” Fortunately, one of the requirements for the IDA program was participation in Polk CDC’s Financial Fitness class. The class didn’t make saving on a low income easy, but it “provided me with tools that I could use for my money management.” Manuel began to budget his income and eat out less often, surprised by how much this spending leak was costing him each month. As a result, he was able to save over $1300 and receive almost $4000 in match money towards his down payment in just over one year.

In November 2009, Manuel used these IDA funds to help him purchase his first home. The purchase has given the Velas a place to raise their growing family and an asset that will help them build wealth over time. Not only that, but Manuel says that his money management habits have “changed dramatically”—and for good. The Velas continue to pay down their debt and they are now teaching their children about savings and money management. “I would recommend this program to anyone who is trying to purchase a home,” he said. It is a “great help.”

Home—where your story begins

Life has taken Walter Dawson to the “dreaming spires” of Oxford, the crowded streets of London, and the halls of Congress. But home, as the saying goes, is where your story begins. And Walter Dawson’s story begins in Falls City, Oregon—a town of just over 900 people situated on the falls of the Luckiamute River in western Polk County.

When Walter was only eight years old, his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In response, young Walter began a letter-writing campaign on behalf of patients like his father. Taking notice of his initiative, the Alzheimer’s Association invited Walter to become an honorary spokesperson. At age 10, Walter traveled from Falls City to Washington D.C. to testify before the United States Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, sharing his family’s experience with Alzheimer’s.

However, back in Falls City, Walter’s mother Clara was struggling to provide a safe, comfortable living environment for her promising young son. Their aging home was beset with dry rot, electrical problems, poor insulation, a substandard foundation, and a lack of operable windows—not to mention the need for a new paint job. What’s more, with Walter’s father in retirement and living in the house only part of the time due to his illness, the Dawsons lacked the funds needed to pay for improvements. Fortunately, Polk CDC’s Housing Rehabilitation Loan Program is designed to help people just like Clara. Polk CDC helped her assess the repairs necessary to make her home safe and comfortable, helped her solicit bids from contractors, and ensured that the work was completed to her satisfaction. Best of all—since Polk CDC Housing Rehabilitation Loans are designed to be affordable to low-income families—the interest rate and terms were adjusted to give her an affordable monthly payment. With the repairs complete, Walter had the opportunity to focus on his future.

Walter thrived in his new environment and resolved to become an even better advocate for families facing Alzheimer’s and other long-term care issues. After four years at the University of Portland and a year in the AmeriCorps program, Walter moved to England to pursue a master’s degree in political science from the prestigious London School of Economics and a master’s in comparative social policy from the even more prestigious University of Oxford. He is now working for the Atlantic Philanthropies, a non-profit foundation dedicated to improving the lives of the disadvantaged, and completing his PhD in Social Policy at Oxford. He was recently selected to become the Somers Aging and Long-Term Care Research Intern for the Senate Special Committee on Aging—the same committee before which he had appeared almost 18 years earlier.

However, even after advanced degrees, exotic travels, and exciting jobs, Walter still looks back to Falls City and the safe living environment made possible by his mother—with help from the Polk CDC Housing Rehabilitation Loan Program. “I am extremely grateful to the Polk Community Development Corporation for the assistance they provided my family while I was growing up with the help of Polk CDC, we (my mother and I) had a roof over our heads and a safe place to call home.”

“A dream come true”

During his movement-style 1968 presidential campaign, Senator Robert Kennedy used to end his campaign speeches by quoting George Bernard Shaw. “Some see things as they are and say why,” he would say, “I dream things that never were and say why not.” It could be said that Shannon Dawson of Dallas followed this adage her whole life. In spite of the financial obstacles, Shannon never asked why the people around her never attended college. She simply dreamed that she would someday.

In fact, Shannon did more than dream—she did everything that we could reasonably expect to make that dream a reality. She worked hard and got good grades all through her school years. It was towards the end of high school, however, that the second half of Shaw’s adage began to become all too real. Why not go? Because college—especially a small, private college like the one that Shannon wanted to attend—is very, very expensive. That’s when Shannon heard about the Valley Individual Development Account (VIDA) program.

The VIDA program offers a 3-to-1 match on savings towards homeownership, small business development, and, most importantly for Shannon, higher education. “It seemed like it was too good to be true,” she said later, “but it was actually as good as it sounded.” That is not to say that the program failed to require anything further from Shannon. While many people her age were relaxing after school, Shannon was attending financial education classes and working to earn money for her account. And when the temptation came to spend her money on a CD or a night out, Shannon resisted. The match, she said, “really gave me the motivation that I needed.”

Finally, during her senior year, Shannon applied and was accepted to attend Lee University—a highly-rated small private college in Tennessee. Sight unseen, she followed her dream to the South and was rewarded with a dream-like experience. A Business Administration major, Shannon continued to receive good grades and was selected for a once-unthinkable opportunity: a summer-long internship with a Fortune 500 corporation based in Southeast Asia. She is now in her junior year and hopes to one day work in a non-profit like Polk CDC, where she volunteers during her time off from school and work.

Her hard work prior to college and the support offered by the VIDA program will help her achieve that goal by allowing her to graduate with a relatively-small amount of student loan debt. “The financial burden was really lessened that first year,” she says. “It ended up being a dream come true.”