Her children press their faces against the metal fence, fingers curled through the links as they watch volunteers work on the frame of a home still open to the sky. A cribbing truck pulls forms from the fresh foundation while someone calls out measurements over the hum of machinery.
For now, it is only outlines. Lumber stacked neatly. Walls beginning to take shape.
But her kids are studying it like it is already theirs.
Chantelle stands a few steps back. Over the years, she has learned not to assume anything is permanent. Rentals have come and gone. Leases have been signed and then ended. Rent has increased with little warning. Stability has always felt temporary, something to hold carefully rather than count on.
She is used to calculating how long something will last.
This time feels different.
This home is being built with her commitment behind it. With her volunteer hours logged on site. With her name on the paperwork.
Living with uncertainty
As a single mom, Chantelle works hard and plans carefully. She budgets with intention and thinks ahead whenever she can. But planning only works when the numbers stay still.
In a rental market that shifts quickly, stability has meant negotiating year by year. Each renewal brings quiet questions. Will the rent increase again? Will this still work? If it doesn’t, where do we go next?
Her children ask simpler versions of the same questions. Will we stay at the same school? Will my room be the same next year?
They do not see the spreadsheets or the late-night recalculations. But they feel the uncertainty.
And so does she.
Imagining ordinary
At a nearby playground in the same neighbourhood, her kids race for the swings. Their laughter carries across the park as boots crunch against packed snow. One asks for a higher push. Another negotiates for one more turn.
There is nothing dramatic about this moment. It is simple and familiar.
And that is exactly what Chantelle wants.
She imagines school mornings beginning in the same kitchen. Backpacks lined up in the same hallway. Groceries set down on the same counter, week after week. Neighbours who recognize them not because they are new, but because they have stayed.
Ordinary has become the goal.
Building something that lasts
Becoming a Habitat homeowner did not mean waiting for change. Chantelle is already completing her volunteer hours on site in Chestermere, working alongside other future homeowners and volunteers. She has carried materials, measured carefully, and watched walls rise from foundation to frame.
There is something different about helping build the place your children will grow up in.
Her kids talk about “our house” now. Not the rental. Not the next place. The house.
That shift is small, but it is steady.
When hope has an address
Soon, there will be siding and windows. A front door that opens to the same place every day.
There will be no chain-link barrier between her children and the place they call theirs.
And for the first time in a long time, Chantelle will not be calculating how long they can stay. She will not be negotiating another lease or bracing for another increase.
They will already be home.
“We’ve had houses that we lived in, but we haven’t had a home. This is what Habitat is giving us: a home, not a house.”
Chantelle, Emma, and Jaxon play on a sheet of ice at the neighbourhood park.
Emma and Jaxon had fun playing at the playground in their future neighbourhood.
