Finding Her Home, Serving Her Community

A single mother, military veteran and investigator for the State of Alaska with more than 40 years of state service, Dawn describes herself as a community servant at heart. Alongside her professional and personal achievements, she says that owning a home has been a significant accomplishment in her life. Now, Dawn is passionate about sharing knowledge and resources to help others achieve their goals, including resources from Alaska Housing Finance Corporation.

Dawn arrived in Alaska in first grade when her father was transferred to Elmendorf Air Force Base as part of his military service.

“We stayed for a long time,” Dawn said, “I knew I always wanted to return here.”

She attended Fairview Elementary, Romig Middle School, West Anchorage High School and the University of Alaska Anchorage, finding her true home in Alaska.

During her high school years one of Dawn’s teachers helped her find an internship placement with the State of Alaska, unknowingly setting her on a career path that Dawn would return to for much of her life. Becoming a public servant felt like the natural choice for Dawn, who says “service was engrained in me by my mother, she always encouraged me to give back and serve others.”  When Dawn had two children of her own, she modeled this belief for them, bringing them along with her to service opportunities. 

As a young mother, Dawn rented a series of apartments and said she dreamed of one day buying her own home and not “living on top of other people.” It was a dream that didn’t always feel possible but her community helped to point her in the right direction.

Guideposts on the Path to Homeownership

“I heard about a week-long homebuyer education class at Alaska Housing during a union meeting in 1999 or 2000,” Dawn says. “At the time, to me, the class was intense.” As a single parent, attending the in-person class every evening was a big commitment and there was a lot of information to take in.

“It was very comprehensive,” Dawn remembers. “The instructors took us through the steps of improving credit, understanding loan terms and knowing what to look for. We learned about home insurance, energy ratings and had guest speakers from different banks to talk about different products.”

While the amount of information was sometimes overwhelming, it helped Dawn to make tangible progress toward her homebuying goals, helping to take points off her loan and reduce her down payment. Dawn left the class with a folder full of reference documents and educational materials that she would turn to again throughout her search for the perfect home, “I would routinely go through each chapter to make sure I was still on the right path,” she said.

When Dawn started working with a real estate licensee, the knowledge she learned in the class helped her to feel confident to advocate for herself.

“The first real estate agent I worked with was showing me around and focusing on parts of town I wasn’t comfortable with,” Dawn remembers. “I turned to my homebuyer education book for advice and saw that if it wasn’t the right fit, it was okay for me to find a new real estate agent. It was okay to question things. I’m glad the class prepared me to know what I was looking for. It helped me in researching the types of homes and neighborhoods where I wanted to live.”

Coming Home

After a lengthy search and an international deployment to Italy, Dawn finally found the right house for her family – it ended up being a property that already felt like home.

“My daughter’s godparents were retiring and getting ready to sell their home. We had moved in with them temporarily in 2002 and when I returned from my deployment I was ready to buy the property. The paperwork was overwhelming and it’s not a fast process, but the class helped me to feel prepared.”

Dawn says she still remembers how scary the process was but felt a weight lift from her once the documents were finalized, when all her hard work and waiting had finally paid off.

“I cried when I got the keys, I was nervous and a lot of emotions left me,” Dawn recalls. “I thought, ‘This is really mine – a place where I can raise my kids, give them their own rooms and a backyard to play in.’ I didn’t always think I could do that, being a single parent.”

Once she and her children had moved into their new home Dawn turned to AHFC again for homeowner resources. She used an energy program to help her get a new boiler, improving the comfort and efficiency of her 1979 home. After some years in her home, Dawn refinanced her loan through AHFC, an option she said she learned about in the homebuyer education class.

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"I’ve used Alaska Housing for the resources I’ve needed and I still look on the website to see what programs I might be able to use to keep my home up-to-date.” - Dawn, Anchorage homeowner

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Sharing Knowledge

Decades after becoming a homeowner Dawn encourages the people around her to seek out knowledge that can empower them to achieve their own goals. For her, it’s another way to pay forward the guidance and help she has received throughout her life.

“People helped me when I was a single parent and still help me,” Dawn says. “If someone at the union hadn’t given me the information about homebuyer education when I was younger, I wouldn’t have been able to get a home on my own. It was a godsend. Now, I tell my son he has to take a homebuyer education class and I encourage people to seek out knowledge to learn about homeownership, because it really helped me.”

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Looking for guidance on your own path to homeownership? Sign up for HomeChoice™: Steps to Homeownership. The no-cost homebuyer education class can provide you with the information and confidence you need to achieve your own homebuying goals.