40 Stories from 40 Years: A Generational House
Almost 30 years ago, siblings Shane and Amber were students at McCarver Elementary where they had a compassionate and caring teacher named Mrs. Wilson. Upon hearing Amber talk about her family’s living situation, Mrs. Wilson sent her home with a letter about an organization called Habitat for Humanity.
“I took a letter home and gave it to my mom and she called Habitat and applied,” Amber recalls.
Amber and Shane’s mother Barbara was a hardworking single mother who spent her days out in the field as an electrician and treated herself to a scoop of chocolate ice cream on special occasions. 
“It was probably the cheapest store brand,” Amber says.
“And cool whip,” Shane adds.
“Oh, she loved cool whip,” Amber laughs. “Yes, the fat free cool whip.”
Barbara entered the Habitat program and her sweat equity hours were spent building her own house in a three-week ‘Blitz Build.’
“I feel like something fundamentally shifted within the fibers of her being when she moved into this house,” Amber says about her mother. “Like, how can she give back what she got?”
Barbara paid off her house within 15 years and became very involved with Tacoma/Pierce County Habitat for Humanity, serving on the board for 6 years and participating in the first Women Build.
“Being an electrician was her superpower,” Amber says.
“A number of the Habitat houses built around 2000 were wired by mom,” Shane adds.
Shane and Amber recall how much pride their mother took in her home, requiring all shoes off at the door and all food stay in the kitchen. They recall the abundance of plants that filled the home with life. Above all else, they look back on how the house became a stable safe haven and a catalyst for embracing change and adventure.
“It allowed us to go out and pursue other things,” Amber says. “There was a safety net.”
After high school, Shane and his high school sweetheart – now wife – moved into Barbara’s home while she was temporarily caring for her own mother in San Francisco. Later, the couple moved to Columbia, Missouri for a job and bought their own home.
After graduating from University of Washington in Seattle, Amber decided to venture to Columbus, Ohio for a few years.
When Shane and his wife moved back to Tacoma, they moved back to Barbara’s house one last time, using it as a transitional refuge.
“I’d gotten a job back here in Tacoma, so I just moved back into the house with mom,” Shane says. Later, he and his wife moved a few blocks away.
After Barbara passed away in 2021, the ownership and fate of the house was up in the air until Shane and Amber’s cousin Heather decided to move in with her two children. The house stayed in the family, bringing the generational wealth, stability, and hope it was intended to.
“It’s nice to think of it through the lens of my mom,” Amber says. “This is what she would have wanted. I can’t imagine the parallel life we could have lived without this house.”
