In May 2025, friends, family, Habitat staff, and board members gathered around to watch Anita burn a copy of her mortgage note. Anita purchased her Habitat home in 2005 and made the last payment on her 20-year mortgage in February 2025.
Before she discovered Habitat, Anita was living in a small home with 10 other people in a high-crime area. She knew she needed a change after teaching her daughter to drop to the floor when she heard gunshots.
In 2005, Anita and her daughter moved into their newly constructed Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity home. She has been meticulous in the maintenance of her home, so much so that Richmond Habitat had her teach a class to future homeowners about the importance of maintaining your home and curb appeal. She knows that the better care she takes of her home now, the more it will be worth when she passes it down to future generations.
In 2016 for our 30th anniversary video, we caught up with Anita who was a little over halfway through paying off her mortgage and said she would "jump for joy" when it was finally paid off.
"I think as homeowners when we buy our house, and we see the date that that loan will be paid off, we think it's not possible, and you can tell from Anita how excited she it to have finally met that goal," Amy McDaniel, Vice President of Homeowner Services, said.
Anita met the goal of paying off her mortgage with no late payments over 20 years. She invited family and friends to her Mortgage Burning Ceremony, where she celebrated this monumental milestone alongside Richmond Habitat staff and board members.
"Not many people can say they have actually paid off their mortgage," Dave Neary, CEO, said. "When you work so hard to achieve a dream, and then you actually work to help construct and build that, there's a connection, an emotional connection, a physical connection, that is not transactional - it's transformational."
Anita said she will now be able to put that money toward other payments and plans to stay in her home and continue her diligent maintenance of it. When asked what she would tell herself back when she first bought her house, she said, "You made it! For 20 years! From 2005 to 2025. I thought I wasn't going to make it, but I made it. I'm glad I got a Richmond Habitat house."
See footage of the ceremony and hear from Anita in the video here: Anita's Mortgage Burning Ceremony
