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Inspiring business stories from the Heart of Berks County
Click on the lamp, table, and chair to add them to the total
Most grant dollars come with strings attached.
"They'll give you X, but X has to go to nails and wood," Tim says. "How do you keep the lights on?" The answer is the Habitat Berks ReStore, a thrift store for furniture, appliances, building materials and closeout merchandise, where every sale becomes an independent dollar the mission can use wherever it's needed most.
Explore Bell Media Group's Marketing Magic in Berks County.
a
Drive across the Buttonwood Street Bridge from West Reading and look to your left. On Miltimore Street, families are living in homes they earned where vacant land used to be, and ground has been broken on the next one. This fall, the ReStore opens in its new location beside The Works in Wyomissing, with GRCA’s acknowledgment from its original 2014 ribbon cutting hanging right beside the new one.
In Tim's 15 years, the need hasn't changed much. "There's a spark in their eye when you see them," he says. Somewhere in Reading this morning, a woman walked out her own front door and looked across the street at the house she used to rent. Habitat Berks would like to make a lot more mornings like that one possible.
Interested in learning more about a GRCA membership and a chance to be featured in an upcoming feature story?
Want to explore additional Growth & Transformation Stories from Reading, PA.? Visit the GRCA's dedicated webpage.
Businesses can show up in person as well. Most Wednesdays, a corporate group of four to eight volunteers works alongside Habitat's construction crew. No experience is required. The foremen are teachers by design, and volunteers leave knowing how to hang a door or paint a window sash. One retired pediatrician gave Habitat three days a week for two years, learning enough to travel to Haiti and build a hospital.
Ask Tim who benefits from Habitat Berks, and one of his first answers might surprise you: the business community.
Employers across Berks County are working hard to hold on to talent. When rent climbs, workers chase a few extra dollars an hour to a job across the county, and the costs ripple outward. There's overtime to cover the gap, a replacement hire who rarely comes cheaper and a product that suffers while someone new learns the ropes. "You've got to start giving out those 20-year watches again," Tim tells business owners. Stable housing, he argues, is one of the best retention tools they aren't using yet.
Olivet Boys & Girls Club is putting that idea to work. Habitat asked Olivet's leadership to identify an employee who fit the program. They chose a young woman, then gave her a promotion and raise that helped her qualify. If all goes to plan, she'll move into her brand-new home late next spring, a homeowner before 30, with every reason to stay.
The ripple runs through the wider community, too. Tim likes to tell local officials he wants to hand them $105,000, roughly what a single homeowner of a newly constructed Habitat home pays in property taxes over a 30-year mortgage. Then there's the $700 a month families save over rent, spent at local restaurants and ballgames.
"Every day she sees the importance of what she did," Tim says. "And every day we get to see the importance of what we're capable of doing for them." Then, he adds a quick correction: "Not for them. With them."
Most families find Habitat Berks the way people find a good mechanic: someone they trust tells them. A nephew who got a house two years ago. A pastor. A coworker. The organization rarely struggles to attract applicants. Occasionally, though, someone applies expecting something for nothing. "They're in for a rude awakening," Tim says. "We're not a soft touch at all." The pool of qualified applicants, he adds, is far stronger than it was 10 years ago.
What families earn, in turn, is a home built with real care. Renovations go all the way back to the brick. Materials that cost a little more get used anyway. A full row home renovation can approach $225,000, a number Tim says makes people nearly fall off their chairs. The point is dignity. A stable future starts with something worth being proud of.
Some stories make the case on their own. A woman working at the DoubleTree saw her rent jump $300 from one month to the next, with no explanation. She couldn't cover it, and she was evicted. Craig Poole, the hotel's manager at the time, put her up at the DoubleTree while Habitat fast-tracked a renovated rowhome. She finished her 200 sweat equity hours in record time. Today, she walks out of the home she owns and looks directly across the street at the house she was forced to leave.
Tim has a simple way of explaining why housing comes first. Picture a baseball diamond. You have to run the bases in order. "If I went straight to third base without having first and second bases covered, that wouldn't work," he says.
For families who already own their homes, the new Home Repair Program offers zero-percent interest loans of up to $20,000 for critical repairs like roofing, plumbing, electrical and windows, with 20 percent of approved projects funded as grants for seniors and people with disabilities. Nobody else was doing it, Tim says. So Habitat did.
Nothing at Habitat Berks is given away. Marketing and Special Events Manager Aimee Hafer has said it on social media more than once: "Did you know we don't give away homes? It's an affordable mortgage program. They're not charity cases. These are hard-working people."
Through the First-Time Home Buyer Program, applicants must have lived in Berks County for at least a year, not currently own a home and earn no more than 80 percent of the area median income. After a serious vetting process, those selected spend roughly 15 months preparing.
They complete 200 hours of sweat equity, take financial education courses and work with Director of Family Services Eneida Powell to raise their credit scores and bring down their debt, so that by closing, they qualify for the best mortgage available to them. Customers Bank created a dedicated Habitat mortgage program at a time, Tim notes, "when nobody wanted to touch us." Other lenders are now following.
The gap between what a fully renovated home is worth and what a working family can borrow is closed through a silent second mortgage. If a home appraises at $200,000 and a family can borrow $110,000, the remaining $90,000 sits quietly in the background until the home is sold. Habitat holds the right of first refusal to buy it back.
In the meantime, the math is hard to argue with. Development Director Doug Long points to a two-bedroom city apartment that cost $950 a month in 2019 and now runs closer to $1,800. A new three-bedroom home on Miltimore Street, with taxes in escrow, typically costs its owner $1,050 to $1,100 a month. That's roughly $700 back in a family's pocket every month, while they build equity.
the Keys
Habitat for Humanity of Berks County was founded in 1988 as a local affiliate of the global Habitat movement, which Tim describes as a two-sided coin. On one side is homeownership; on the other is volunteerism—and the belief that both are changed by working alongside each other. A good volunteer day, in Tim's words, should be "a tattoo experience,” meaning it stays with you forever.
Beyond those two commitments, each affiliate is free to take the pulse of its own community and respond accordingly. Habitat Berks has taken that freedom seriously.
When Tim took over in 2011, the organization was, as he puts it with a smile, "in the witness protection program. Nobody knew about us." Twice in those early years, he wasn't sure he could make payroll. One of those times, it was a Tuesday, with payroll due Thursday. A handful of people in the community believed in the vision enough to step in and help.
Around the same time, Albert Boscov invited Tim onto the board of Our City Reading. From Boscov, Tim learned that rebuilding a neighborhood does far more good than scattered, one-off renovations. Habitat Berks began clustering its work, block by block. When Boscov later donated land on Miltimore Street, a rare stretch of buildable acreage in the middle of the city, the idea had room to grow. Eight new homes stand there today, with more underway.
The model changed, too. Habitat traditionally offered zero-percent interest mortgages, an approach Tim admits was a bad business model. About eight or nine years ago, Habitat Berks stepped away from it. Staff now work with families to raise credit scores and lower debt, then walk them into a bank for a more conventional 30-year mortgage. "They're being treated exactly the way any of us would be treated," Tim says. "I think that's an ultimate sign of respect."
The results speak for themselves. For about three years running, 100 percent of Habitat Berks' mortgages have been in good standing.
A first-year teacher hired by the Reading School District starts at $53,300 a year. By Executive Director Tim Daley's math, that puts her squarely in Habitat’s range. That surprises people. Many assume Habitat for Humanity of Berks County serves families in crisis, or that it hands over keys to anyone who asks. Neither is true. The people Habitat Berks serves are teachers, hotel staff, warehouse workers and the folks who unload the trucks. They’re the workforce that keeps Berks County running, earning too much for most assistance but too little to buy a home on their own. And for nearly four decades, Habitat Berks has been building homes for these families, one rowhome, one block, one neighborhood at a time.
Inspiring business stories from the Heart of Berks County
Businesses can show up in person as well. Most Wednesdays, a corporate group of four to eight volunteers works alongside Habitat's construction crew. No experience is required. The foremen are teachers by design, and volunteers leave knowing how to hang a door or paint a window sash. One retired pediatrician gave Habitat three days a week for two years, learning enough to travel to Haiti and build a hospital.
Ask Tim who benefits from Habitat Berks, and one of his first answers might surprise you: the business community.
Employers across Berks County are working hard to hold on to talent. When rent climbs, workers chase a few extra dollars an hour to a job across the county, and the costs ripple outward. There's overtime to cover the gap, a replacement hire who rarely comes cheaper and a product that suffers while someone new learns the ropes. "You've got to start giving out those 20-year watches again," Tim tells business owners. Stable housing, he argues, is one of the best retention tools they aren't using yet.
Olivet Boys & Girls Club is putting that idea to work. Habitat asked Olivet's leadership to identify an employee who fit the program. They chose a young woman, then gave her a promotion and raise that helped her qualify. If all goes to plan, she'll move into her brand-new home late next spring, a homeowner before 30, with every reason to stay.
The ripple runs through the wider community, too. Tim likes to tell local officials he wants to hand them $105,000, roughly what a single homeowner of a newly constructed Habitat home pays in property taxes over a 30-year mortgage. Then there's the $700 a month families save over rent, spent at local restaurants and ballgames.
Tap on the lamp, table, and chair to add them to the total
$$$
$$$
$$$
Most grant dollars come with strings attached.
"They'll give you X, but X has to go to nails and wood," Tim says. "How do you keep the lights on?" The answer is the Habitat Berks ReStore, a thrift store for furniture, appliances, building materials and closeout merchandise, where every sale becomes an independent dollar the mission can use wherever it's needed most.
Tim has a simple way of explaining why housing comes first. Picture a baseball diamond. You have to run the bases in order. "If I went straight to third base without having first and second bases covered, that wouldn't work," he says.
Interested in learning more about a GRCA membership and a chance to be featured in an upcoming feature story?
Want to explore additional Growth & Transformation Stories from Reading, PA.? Visit the GRCA's dedicated webpage.
Explore Bell Media Group's Marketing Magic in Berks County.
a
Drive across the Buttonwood Street Bridge from West Reading and look to your left. On Miltimore Street, families are living in homes they earned where vacant land used to be, and ground has been broken on the next one. This fall, the ReStore opens in its new location beside The Works in Wyomissing, with GRCA’s acknowledgment from its original 2014 ribbon cutting hanging right beside the new one.
In Tim's 15 years, the need hasn't changed much. "There's a spark in their eye when you see them," he says. Somewhere in Reading this morning, a woman walked out her own front door and looked across the street at the house she used to rent. Habitat Berks would like to make a lot more mornings like that one possible.
"Every day she sees the importance of what she did," Tim says. "And every day we get to see the importance of what we're capable of doing for them." Then, he adds a quick correction: "Not for them. With them."
Most families find Habitat Berks the way people find a good mechanic: someone they trust tells them. A nephew who got a house two years ago. A pastor. A coworker. The organization rarely struggles to attract applicants. Occasionally, though, someone applies expecting something for nothing. "They're in for a rude awakening," Tim says. "We're not a soft touch at all." The pool of qualified applicants, he adds, is far stronger than it was 10 years ago.
What families earn, in turn, is a home built with real care. Renovations go all the way back to the brick. Materials that cost a little more get used anyway. A full row home renovation can approach $225,000, a number Tim says makes people nearly fall off their chairs. The point is dignity. A stable future starts with something worth being proud of.
Some stories make the case on their own. A woman working at the DoubleTree saw her rent jump $300 from one month to the next, with no explanation. She couldn't cover it, and she was evicted. Craig Poole, the hotel's manager at the time, put her up at the DoubleTree while Habitat fast-tracked a renovated rowhome. She finished her 200 sweat equity hours in record time. Today, she walks out of the home she owns and looks directly across the street at the house she was forced to leave.
For families who already own their homes, the new Home Repair Program offers zero-percent interest loans of up to $20,000 for critical repairs like roofing, plumbing, electrical and windows, with 20 percent of approved projects funded as grants for seniors and people with disabilities. Nobody else was doing it, Tim says. So Habitat did.
Nothing at Habitat Berks is given away. Marketing and Special Events Manager Aimee Hafer has said it on social media more than once: "Did you know we don't give away homes? It's an affordable mortgage program. They're not charity cases. These are hard-working people."
Through the First-Time Home Buyer Program, applicants must have lived in Berks County for at least a year, not currently own a home and earn no more than 80 percent of the area median income. After a serious vetting process, those selected spend roughly 15 months preparing.
They complete 200 hours of sweat equity, take financial education courses and work with Director of Family Services Eneida Powell to raise their credit scores and bring down their debt, so that by closing, they qualify for the best mortgage available to them. Customers Bank created a dedicated Habitat mortgage program at a time, Tim notes, "when nobody wanted to touch us." Other lenders are now following.
The gap between what a fully renovated home is worth and what a working family can borrow is closed through a silent second mortgage. If a home appraises at $200,000 and a family can borrow $110,000, the remaining $90,000 sits quietly in the background until the home is sold. Habitat holds the right of first refusal to buy it back.
In the meantime, the math is hard to argue with. Development Director Doug Long points to a two-bedroom city apartment that cost $950 a month in 2019 and now runs closer to $1,800. A new three-bedroom home on Miltimore Street, with taxes in escrow, typically costs its owner $1,050 to $1,100 a month. That's roughly $700 back in a family's pocket every month, while they build equity.
the Keys
DALEY
Habitat for Humanity of Berks County was founded in 1988 as a local affiliate of the global Habitat movement, which Tim describes as a two-sided coin. On one side is homeownership; on the other is volunteerism—and the belief that both are changed by working alongside each other. A good volunteer day, in Tim's words, should be "a tattoo experience,” meaning it stays with you forever.
Beyond those two commitments, each affiliate is free to take the pulse of its own community and respond accordingly. Habitat Berks has taken that freedom seriously.
When Tim took over in 2011, the organization was, as he puts it with a smile, "in the witness protection program. Nobody knew about us." Twice in those early years, he wasn't sure he could make payroll. One of those times, it was a Tuesday, with payroll due Thursday. A handful of people in the community believed in the vision enough to step in and help.
Around the same time, Albert Boscov invited Tim onto the board of Our City Reading. From Boscov, Tim learned that rebuilding a neighborhood does far more good than scattered, one-off renovations. Habitat Berks began clustering its work, block by block. When Boscov later donated land on Miltimore Street, a rare stretch of buildable acreage in the middle of the city, the idea had room to grow. Eight new homes stand there today, with more underway.
The model changed, too. Habitat traditionally offered zero-percent interest mortgages, an approach Tim admits was a bad business model. About eight or nine years ago, Habitat Berks stepped away from it. Staff now work with families to raise credit scores and lower debt, then walk them into a bank for a more conventional 30-year mortgage. "They're being treated exactly the way any of us would be treated," Tim says. "I think that's an ultimate sign of respect."
The results speak for themselves. For about three years running, 100 percent of Habitat Berks' mortgages have been in good standing.
A first-year teacher hired by the Reading School District starts at $53,300 a year. By Executive Director Tim Daley's math, that puts her squarely in Habitat’s range. That surprises people. Many assume Habitat for Humanity of Berks County serves families in crisis, or that it hands over keys to anyone who asks. Neither is true. The people Habitat Berks serves are teachers, hotel staff, warehouse workers and the folks who unload the trucks. They’re the workforce that keeps Berks County running, earning too much for most assistance but too little to buy a home on their own. And for nearly four decades, Habitat Berks has been building homes for these families, one rowhome, one block, one neighborhood at a time.
