More room for a growing family

Sung and her husband, Uk, were in need of more room. The parents of four daughters were living in a mobile home park in Murfreesboro, paying nearly $800 a month in rent for a home that wasn’t big enough to house their family.

“Before we moved here we lived in a mobile home park, before the girls grew up we thought moving from an apartment to a mobile home would be bigger,” she said. “But as they got bigger, the room got smaller and smaller.”

In need of a bigger home for them and their girls, Sung saw a flyer for the Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity one day at her daughter’s Head Start program. She decided to apply.

“We had been here for a while, and my daughter went to Head Start for Pre-K. I saw on the door a sign for Habitat Home applications, so I read it. We had been thinking a long time about getting a house and everything seemed just for us. We submitted an application and got approved, and I think the Lord has shown that when it’s his time he will provide for us.”

The family now lives in a two-story home in Rutherford County Habitat for Humanity’s Legacy Pointe neighborhood.

The neighborhood, which will eventually include 76 single-family homes, was built with the help of funds from THDA’s Tennessee Housing Trust Fund and from funds made from selling mortgages as part of THDA’s Tier 1 and Tier 2 New Start Mortgage Program.

Sung said the house is like nothing she and her husband lived in before, or after, the immigrated to Tennessee as refugees from Southeast Asia.

“When my husband and I grew up, we never really had a nice house, like a new home,” she said. “So when we saw this, it was just so great.”

The family now pays less for their mortgage than they did to rent their old mobile home, she said, and are located closer to their children’s schools and amenities like grocery stores and shopping centers.

“This is why I say almost every day how thankful I am,” she said. “The twins’ school is only 2 minutes from here and the older girls the school is only 10 minutes away. We’re close to everything from here, the schools, the grocery store, everything. I’m so grateful to be where we are. It’s very quiet and peaceful and it feels great.”