New home, new life for Mannas family
The Mannas family doesn't miss their former two-bedroom rental apartment in downtown Lowell. They are fine without the brown water stains on the ceilings, the peeling wallpaper, and the hole in the back-porch floor that once swallowed Daisy the cat. No one misses the side yard they were barred from, the landlord who barred them, or the hulking out-of-date space heater that spewed fumes into their living room.
Now, they live in a brand new, three-bedroom duplex in Concord, with their name on the deed. The drive from Lowell takes 40 minutes. But the move, in many ways, has been a galactic trip.
Jimmy and Sandi Mannas are first-time homeowners, and their Lowell-born sons, Justin, 12, and Stephen, 11, are now suburban Concord boys. The family, chosen last year from 17 low-income applicants in the area, put in hundreds of hours with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Lowell, which helped them build and finance their new suburban home. For years, Jimmy and Sandi had tried to break into the housing market, but with his job as a painter in Billerica and her work as a service representative at a company in Concord, there was never enough money for a down payment. Credit was nonexistent.
Now, four months into their first year in Concord, the Mannases are learning the ropes. The best part, they all agree, is their new, safe neighborhood. The worst part has been learning to live in it.
Their new home, the rear unit of a two-floor, green-shuttered, clapboard duplex, sits by a cul-de-sac on a tree-lined street near Route 2. The appliances, like almost everything else, are brand new, the windows are airtight, and the blue-carpeted living room is big enough for the microsuede couch, matching lounge chair, and ottoman, and the 52-inch flat screen TV they ordered last spring on layaway.
The boys love riding their mountain bikes around the neighborhood or into Concord Center (it takes 15 minutes, said Stephen, longer if you're not him), and instead of heading to an after-school program as they did in Lowell, they now come directly home around 3 p.m. They can walk Katie, their new yellow Labrador puppy, any time they want to, even well after dark. ''The street ends right next to us," said Justin, ''so it's always real clear."
But in other realms of their new life, all four agreed, the roads have been much harder to navigate. There are more than a dozen kids in the neighborhood, but they don't go outside much to play, the boys report. Even in the new seven-house cluster right around them, all affordable housing units built this past year, people tend to keep to themselves, said Sandi.
In their old neighborhood, Jimmy explained, the houses were right next to each other. ''I knew everyone around there -- our neighbors, their kids, their neighbors -- and I saw them all the time," he said. ''I used to go out and wash the truck and blast the radio, no problem."
''Jimmy had to go and apologize to our neighbors [in Concord] when he played his music too loud one time," said Sandi.
Stephen is enrolled at the Willard Elementary School, and Justin attends Peabody Middle School and each has mixed reviews. The brothers have found the academics much more challenging than in previous years; teachers maintain much higher expectations and more stringent rules. ''I used to do my homework in 15 minutes," said Justin. ''Now I've got stuff that takes me hours."
Both boys had played football for years. But this fall, Sandi had to apply for financial aid to enroll the boys in Concord football teams. The $60 fee per player in Lowell was affordable, she said, but Concord's $300 dues were more than they could manage.
Stephen likes his Concord football team. When he learned his new team didn't give out awards at the season's end, he used his own money to buy medals for his coaches and teammates. Justin quit football after three weeks of practice, before the official season started. ''I just didn't like how they did it here," he said. ''The people were way different. [The team] didn't work a lot on technique."
For Jimmy and Sandi, the move has brought its own share of challenges. Both have new, higher-paying jobs: Jimmy now works from 5:30 a.m. until late in the evening as a cell-tower builder for Eagle Telecommunication Specialists. Sandi has just started a new job with better benefits in Concord. They haven't gone back to Lowell much -- there hasn't been time -- and few Lowell friends have visited them since their housewarming party in September. They are, however, still Sunday regulars at the Harbor of Hope church in Chelmsford.
Their mail now includes multiple credit card offers, but they haven't taken one out yet; Jimmy is a stickler about owing money. ''It's biblical," he says. ''In the end days, if you owe someone money, the Bible says you become their servant."
There are other reasons as well, said Sandi. Jimmy's 1994 Ford Explorer just blew its head gasket and there are new bills to pay. As renters in Lowell, they never had a water or sewer bill (now they pay about $200 every two months), nor a trash collection fee ($120 per year, plus $1.50 per barrel), nor a yard to seed, plant, rake, and weed.
At $858, their monthly housing costs hardly break the bank -- it's only $8 more than their Lowell rent and includes the mortgage payment, contributions to a home-repair escrow fund, their condo association fee, and taxes -- but finances still require a juggling act. ''Things in Concord are wicked expensive," she said. Instead of running to the nearby Stop & Shop or Crosby's for groceries, she now makes a weekly 14-mile trip out to Westford to shop at Market Basket.
Christmas, Sandi recently decided, will have to come late this year.
Gift shopping will be postponed until the after-Christmas sales, she said, and everyone took it in stride. Justin wants a
''The tree is up, and there will be a Christmas dinner," Sandi said, ''and Jimmy and I already got what we prayed for."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
