“You Need Everyone”
This blog post is the second blog post of the Housing Alexandria Stories Campaign, the purpose of which is to celebrate our residents and share their stories in order to create more recognition and appreciation in our community as well as to strengthen Housing Alexandria’s ability to raise money to provide life-changing services to our residents through our resident services programs. This blog post was based on an interview with Ronnie(she/her), a Housing Alexandria resident.
Ronnie is a wonderful example of an extremely selfless person who has given herself to her community and to her family.
Ronnie is originally from Massachusetts, where she was raised and went to college. She left college after her first year and set off looking for work and trying to find her place in the world. She spent time without a home for a while, and she moved around several times trying to find work, first to Florida and then later to Maryland before finally arriving in Alexandria around 40 years ago. She says that she “fell in love” with Alexandria and has lived here ever since. She is a single mother with three adult children, Erika, Crystal, and Wyatt. She describes her family as her “world,” and she has been able to stay close with all three of her children. She is immensely proud of the individuals her children have grown up to be. She is also ecstatic that she is going to become a grandmother soon.
Having experienced challenging times on her own before moving to Alexandria, she wanted to provide for her children and ensure that they could succeed. Because she saw her kids experience challenges early on in school, she wanted to become involved at their schools. Ronnie saw that many of the children in the public school system did not have activities to do outside of school because their parents, some with multiple jobs, were too busy working long hours to support their families and could not be as involved in their children’s lives. She wanted the children in the community to have opportunities to enrich their lives. She knew other areas in town had neighborhood soccer teams in the local league and thought her neighborhood should have a team too. So, she became a soccer coach and organized a neighborhood soccer team comprised of neighborhood kids, many of whom would not have otherwise had the opportunity to play organized sports. Many of these children were from primarily low-income and minority families. The kids on her team proved to be talented, and their soccer team was highly competitive, even going undefeated in multiple seasons.
One of the defining challenges of Ronnie’s life has been taking care of her daughter Crystal. Crystal has Down syndrome, so she required more attention than most children while growing up. Ronnie was working two jobs and could not always take care of Crystal by herself, so she put Crystal in before and after school care. During the school day, Crystal was in special needs classrooms, but Ronnie felt that the program she was in was not meeting her needs and helping her to grow as an individual. She felt that a core issue was that Crystal was always separated from the typically-developing children at school. Ronnie expressed these concerns to the school and worked with the school board to help the school develop a new inclusive program that gave students with disabilities more opportunities to spend time and interact with the rest of the kids their age. The implementation of this program was rough at times, and issues came up that had to be addressed, but Ronnie helped the school to address the issues and make the program successful. This program has been in place for over 25 years and has benefitted countless children during that time.
Because of her involvement with the public schools in implementing an inclusive special-needs program and her personal connection to the problem of meeting the needs of special-needs students, Ronnie was encouraged to run for the school board so that she could advocate for the needs of students with disabilities and their families. She ended up serving on for 12 and a half years, during which time she helped implement lots of positive changes in the school system. She is proud of her work with the school board, though she also acknowledges that there is still lots of room for improvement in the local school system. She has always been service-oriented because she sees so much need in the community. It is a core belief of hers that, “No matter how little you think you might have, there are always people to bless. And no matter how much you think you need, there are always people that need more than you do.”
“No matter how little you think you might have, there are always people to bless. And no matter how much you think you need, there are always people that need more than you do.”
Working two jobs was very taxing on Ronnie, and she badly wanted to be with her kids more, so she retired from her physically taxing USPS job and decided not to run for the school board again. She struggled for some time while trying to find a job that would allow her to be with her family more, but she soon found a job with DOT paratransit where she makes reservations for Alexandria residents with disabilities. She still has the same job today, and she loves it because she feels that she is doing something that helps people.
Even after beginning her new job, Ronnie was not making a lot of money, and housing in Alexandria was, and continues to be, expensive. Potential expenses were also increased by being limited to housing that would accommodate Crystal. Ronnie considered moving out of Alexandria to a cheaper area, but this would have been difficult for her and Crystal, not only because of the emotional impact of leaving the city they had lived in and loved for Crystal’s entire life, but also because it would take a lot of energy to find new people to support Crystal and to find the services she needs. Crystal had grown accustomed to her community and network, and it would be hard for her to get used to new people and new circumstances because it would have disrupted her routine. Ronnie desired to stay in Alexandria if possible.
Soon after, Ronnie’s eldest daughter, Erika, mentioned that she was applying for affordable housing with Housing Alexandria and suggested Ronnie do so too. Ronnie’s application was approved, and she was provided with an affordable unit set aside for handicapped residents that would meet her and Crystals’ needs within their price range. Erika also moved into the same building, and she has helped take care of her sister Crystal ever since. Ronnie describes Erika as a “lifesaver,” not only because of her consistent help, but also the fact that she cares for Crystal more effectively than any care worker because of her personal relationship with her. With her foundation of home and family in place, Crystal has since found opportunities to grow in the community by securing her dream job at the AMC movie theatre.
Ronnie described Housing Alexandria as a “godsend” because it provided her with affordable housing that met her and Crystal’s needs and helped her stay in the community she loved. Otherwise, she would have had to uproot and disrupt both her and Crystal’s lives in ways that would have been devastating. She had always been in favor of affordable housing but never thought she would benefit from it directly. Ronnie loves Alexandria and has valued raising her children in a diverse, multicultural environment that has exposed them to different world views and cultures. She sees affordable housing as important because it allows Alexandria to continue to be a dynamic, multicultural community with a diversity of businesses, food, and people, including people with special needs like her daughter Crystal. Without affordable housing she believes that many of these residents and businesses would have to leave Alexandria, which would be tragic for the community. “We need to keep all the people here,” she says. “You need everyone.”
