Heather Brackett, LHA's new Family Self-Sufficiency Coordinator, personifies the American Dream – as well as HUD’s mission to help people achieve that dream.
With hard work and determination, as well the support of federal programs, her friends and community, the 38-year-old dental surgical assistant overcame tremendous challenges to build the life that she wanted, and others can aspire to.
Heather’s story begins in 1982, when her mother, Yow Neang Year, fled the lasting scars of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime and immigrated to the United States, where she eventually met and married David Brackett and had two children. In 1990, the young family moved from Indiana to join the flourishing Cambodian community in Lowell, Massachusetts.
After years of renting an apartment in Lowell, during which they received federal assistance for food and fuel costs through local community services provider Community Teamwork, Inc., Heather’s parents were able to purchase a home of their own in 1998, a home that provided rental income and helped improve the family’s finances.
Unfortunately, Heather’s father passed away in 2002 when she was just 17. As her mother was not fluent in English, Heather was thrust into the grown-up responsibilities of helping run the household and overseeing the family’s financial activities. Just two years later, Heather became a first-time mother at age 18 and began working at a local donut shop for $10 an hour.
Life was bleak during this time, but over the next few years, through hard work and perseverance, Heather’s employment status improved and stabilized, and she decided that her next step was to get her own apartment.
Working with the Lowell, Massachusetts Housing Authority, Heather was able to secure one of HUD’s Public Housing vouchers and move into a little apartment of her own. Heather also entered a five-year contract to participate in HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program (FSS), which links families to both private and public resources that help them access educational services, job training and employment counseling and increase their economic stability.
The FSS program also includes childcare and transportation assistance, financial literacy and homeownership counseling and an interest-bearing escrow account that is established by the Public Housing Authority for each participating family. Any increases in the family’s rent because of increased earned income during the family’s participation in the program result in a credit to the family’s escrow account, and once a family graduates from the program they may use the funds that accumulated in the escrow account for any purpose, including home downpayments and closing costs.
With the contract in place, Heather worked with the local community services provider Community Teamwork, Inc., which provided initial assistance to her parents many years before and administers the FSS program for the Lowell Housing Authority. Over time, and while dealing with some obstacles and hardships that necessitated a two-year extension of the FFS contract, Heather worked to satisfy the requirements in her ITSP, including completing a six-week financial literacy program to learn about money management, clear up her credit and save money.
In addition, the financial literacy program administered by CTI as part of the FSS program requirements provides an Individual Development Account for each participant, which is funded by a variety of public and private agencies and organizations and contributes $2 for every $1 each participant deposits in the account, to a maximum of $6,000.
By the time Heather completed the FSS program, she had secured jobs with dental and oral surgery offices, moved into a series of larger subsidized apartments and set her sights on buying a home for herself and her two daughters.
After completing HUD’s eight-hour “First-Time Home Buyers” course offered through the Merrimack Valley Housing Authority, Heather used the $14,000 she was able to save in her FSS escrow account, the $8,000 she was able to save in her Individual Development Account and the federally funded, low-interest ONE Mortgage Program that is available to eligible first-time homebuyers to purchase the home of her dreams in Lowell, Massachusetts – the very city she moved to as a little girl and struggled in for decades as she built her life from very humble and difficult circumstances.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom energy-efficient home, complete with a den and newly installed solar panels and plumbing and heating systems, is now the place where Heather and her daughters live comfortably and securely, achieve their goals and dream big new dreams in.
Thanks to the stable housing that HUD programs provided, as well as other HUD and federal programs, Heather was able to work her way from a minimum wage job in a donut shop to a well-paying career as a licensed General Anesthesia Surgical Assistant and from living in subsidized housing to a owning a beautiful home of her own.
And she’s not done yet – Heather recently accepted an offer to join the Lowell Housing Authority as a Housing Technician (a position that she learned about and applied for at a HUD/Lowell Housing Authority job fair!) and is pursuing a real estate license to someday “pay it forward” and help people enroll in HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program.
“My journey was very difficult, but I was determined to push through it, get off government assistance and become self-sufficient,” says Heather. “Thanks to HUD programs and some very caring and committed people at several community and housing organizations, I was able to work hard and achieve my American Dream.”