Haven: An affordable home of her own

Many people immediately decorate their new homes, hanging stylish curtains and filling each room with colorful furniture on Day One.

Mara Sanchez has outfitted her new 1,800-square-foot townhouse in Point Breeze with the basic minimum, though she has been there since the spring.

The Arts and Crafts-style house Sanchez, 38, shares with her 15-year-old son, Donovan, and her 4-year-old daughter, Aliana, has only beds in the bedrooms on the second and third floors.

On the first floor, Sanchez has positioned stools and assembled the dishes and flatware necessary for the family to eat meals at the polished-granite island built into the light-filled kitchen.

Outfitted with energy-efficient stainless-steel appliances, the kitchen is located at the back of a great room that looks longer than it is because its oak floors are unencumbered with furnishings. The exception is a large television placed near some windows and a colorful tiled vestibule.

"Of course, I want the house to look nice, so I will furnish it with furniture and decorations when it is part of my budget and we can afford it," she says.

Sanchez was among the successful applicants for a program offered last year by Philadelphia-based Innova Services Corp., which develops and builds affordable, energy-efficient housing.

According to Jeffrey Allegretti, president of Innova, Sanchez applied for a three-story house in the Latona Green development that cost her $169,900, about half its market value, through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

She was successful, Allegretti says, because she met the program's requirements for good credit and an income that is less than 80 percent of the median family income in the eight-county Philadelphia area, and because she agreed she would not sell the house for more than she paid for it for 15 years. No flipping is permitted.

There were many applicants for the 10 homes in the development in Point Breeze, north of the city's Graduate Hospital neighborhood. They went quickly, he says.

Sanchez does not take her good fortune lightly. A family health-care counselor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, she and her children were living in a small, not-quite-adequate place she owned near Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia when she heard about the affordable-housing program.

Kurt Raymond, a principal of Cicada Architecture/Planning Inc., who designed the Latona Green dwellings, says their appearance was meant to fit into their rowhouse neighborhood.

"The 10 houses aren't located together," Raymond says. "They are spread out through the area in lots that were vacant and now are part of the neighborhood."

Their exteriors are distinctive: fiber brick and cement evoking the vintage rowhouses of South Philadelphia, but with blue bars that offer a clean, geometric touch.

Raymond says the single-family houses are two or three stories high, depending on the blocks in which they are situated. Each has a roof deck and a garden, as well as cost-saving sustainable features.

The houses were designed to ensure they provided more amenities and better-quality construction than many subsidized-housing units do.

"The oak floors and granite-topped island, as well as the sliding doors leading to the garden, are some examples of this," he says.

Sanchez says she visited the site of her new home frequently while construction was in process. She wanted to make sure the owners of the existing houses in the neighborhood would be friendly. For the most part, they are, she says.

"One person, who didn't know I had bought the house, says that he wouldn't welcome people in subsidized housing," Sanchez says. "He didn't know I had bought the house, and I don't even know if he lived nearby or was just visiting.

"Now that we have moved in, we have a deck with a view of Liberty Place and the Philadelphia skyline, a yard outside the kitchen, and room for the kids to play.

"I love it, but I keep telling my son we have to be careful. We are paying for our water now, and we have to make sure we don't waste anything."

What does she like best?

"Everything works."