There's No Place Like Home

What does home mean to you?

That’s the question we asked New Story team members and families we support in Latin America. The responses proved a simple yet powerful truth: home is fundamental to helping us thrive.

This holiday season, we want to help make your home a space where values are shared. Here are a few questions you can ask your family and friends to create a sense of togetherness:

• What was your favorite part about your childhood home? 
• What’s a memory from your current home that always makes you laugh?
• When do you feel the most peace at home?
• What’s a part of your home that you never thought you’d love so much?
• What’s your next big dream for your home?

Home is the foundation of basic needs

If Maslow’s Hierarchy had to summarize its foundation in one word, it would be home. But home goes beyond the foundation of our basic needs. It’s also the through-line for everything good in our lives.

You can’t move up your hierarchy of needs until you have safe shelter. From staying healthy to reaching your full potential, everything starts at home. 

Unfortunately, nearly 2 billion people lack adequate housing. Without this foundation, every other basic need is threatened.

Meet Gabriela.

When we met Gabriela in El Salvador, she lived in a shelter her family built at the top of 90 stairs. “When it rained,” she says, “the mud walls would sometimes collapse, and accessing our home was hard with its steep incline.” One of her daughters has a spinal condition that required Gabriela to carry her up and down 90 stairs whenever they left their home. There was no safety or stability. Without safe housing, you can only manage one goal: survive. 

For too long, vulnerable families like Gabriela’s have been left out of the traditional housing market. These families' main options have been to rely on charity or government subsidies. But those methods are simply incapable of solving the housing crisis. All of the philanthropy and subsidies together would address less than 10% of the need, leaving a multi-trillion-dollar gap. 

Not only do traditional methods financially fall short, but they also fall short of what families actually want. 

From our first 10 years of addressing the global housing crisis, we’ve seen vulnerable families want to participate in the housing market rather than rely on charity. Families want to have ownership on their journey toward securing housing. That’s why we unleash market forces to make it possible for underserved families to own a home. We flip the script of traditional charity. 

By working with the market, we’re unlocking opportunities for more people like Gabriela to become homeowners.

Gabriela's new story

Gabriela now lives in a safe home with her husband and daughter. With the help of local partners and families’ input, we designed their home to be on the corner of a vibrant community, giving them easy access to the main road to resources like healthcare and job opportunities. 

“When we were told our house was ready, we were happy because my daughter was going to have a better quality of life, without the risks we faced every time it rained where we used to live.” — Gabriela

A stable foundation has allowed Gabriela’s family to look beyond survival. Once Gabriela settled into her new home, she attended and graduated from culinary school. She’s now building a small business selling tamales. Gabriela’s family can finally move beyond survival and reach their full potential. 

Gabriela’s story is just one of thousands we’ve seen over the past decade. Each story has proven that we all have more in common than not. We all need a safe place that meets our basic needs — a place to call home.