BY EMILY SINER esiner1@mwsp1.com June 16, 2011 11:10PM

Article Extras Updated: June 17, 2011 2:10AM
Jackie Holmes understands all about tough times. It’s why she tells everyone she knows about Habitat for Humanity, a program that converts vacant houses into homes for low-income families. If someone isn’t struggling financially, she figures, they might know someone who is, someone who needs to know about the program.

“Habitat’s just around the corner,” she tells them.

For Holmes, it’s even closer now. On Saturday, she became the owner of a newly renovated house in Park Forest.

A year and a half ago, Holmes was living in Harvey as a single mother with her sons Ronnie and Dontrell, while also going to school for her associate’s degree. To make things tougher, her home was broken into, and her car was broken into twice.

Then a friend told her about Habitat for Humanity’s south suburban chapter. She applied to the program in January 2010 and now is a homeowner.

“It’s been a blessing all the way through,” said Holmes, who is expected to move in in a couple of weeks.

The local Habitat chapter restores houses and then sells them to qualified applicants living either in substandard housing or where rent is too high for their income.

In other words, they’re on the verge of being homeless, said David Tracy, the chapter’s executive director. He said there are more than 50,000 such households in the Southland and that that is a conservative estimate.

“Most people don’t realize the depth of the problems in the south suburbs,” he said. “In reality, it’s right here in our own back yard.”

Using federal grant money, Habitat has purchased 18 foreclosed and abandoned homes in Park Forest and Lansing over the past year. With the refurbishing work complete, two of those homes in Park Forest were dedicated Saturday — one to Holmes and one to Sarah Hendrickson.

Tracy said there’s a misconception that the houses are given away. Instead, the prospective owners go through a thorough application process that looks at need, financial stability and credit history, he said. Applicants must be able to come up with a down payment and be able to afford the monthly mortgage.

Habitat’s mortgages have no interest, and the monthly payments never exceed 30 percent of a homeowner’s monthly income. Tracy said most applicants had been spending 50 to 60 percent of their incomes on rent.

The new homeowners also must build up “sweat equity” by putting in hundreds of hours of volunteer work at Habitat work sites, events or at ReStore, which sells used appliances and building materials.

The point of the “sweat equity” hours isn’t just to give back to Habitat, Tracy said, but to teach new homeowners how to take care of their houses.

Holmes was anxious about reaching the 350 hours required of her, she said, because over the past year, she has been working at a nursing home in Chicago Heights and going to nursing school at night. Add 7- and 9-year-olds into the mix, and she wasn’t sure she’d get the hours in. But with the help of friends and family — including her sons — she surpassed the requirement by 50 hours, including painting, landscaping and installing a new bathroom floor and kitchen cabinets.

After Habitat bought the home, it took about three months to refurbish it. Watching it being restored and become a home — her home — was “overwhelming,” she said.

“It was an emotional roller coaster,” Holmes said. “You’re happy, you want to cry, you want to jump up and down, you’re anxious.”

She said her sons have been impatiently waiting to move in. But she’s looking forward to an abstract benefit as well: a sense of stability.

“And with the stability comes peace,” she said. “We haven’t had that in a while.”