Roy Dye, right, hands the keys to Mertis and Donald Moss at the dedication ceremony for their new home in Pell City Saturday morning.
A group from the community gathered at the house on 8th Avenue South to congratulate the new homeowners and Habitat for Humanity members who made it all possible.
“Y’all are really unsung heroes,” Mayor Bill Hereford said. “You folks at Habitat strive to help people realize the American dream to own a home. For our community, this house is further belief about caring for our neighbors.
“We don’t build houses, we build homes.”
The Mosses are the most recent family in Pell City to receive a home from Habitat for Humanity.
The dedication ceremony was opened with a word of prayer, and Hereford, members of Habitat for Humanity, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lynn Batemon and Pell City High School football coach David Shores spoke.
“This is house number 10,” said Lance Stella, a member of Habitat for Humanity’s Family Selection Committee. “We’ve completed 10 Habitat houses in the Pell City area and we have house number 11, we’re getting ready to kick it off in about a month.”
According to Habitat for Humanity’s rules, the Mosses must pay between $250 and $350 a month for their mortgage, which carries no interest.
“If you don’t maintain the property we will take it away and give it to someone else and that has happened. It’s rare but it has happened,” Stella said.
The Mosses also had to put in 200 hours of “sweat equity” into either their home or another Habitat house.
“I can’t tell you enough about all the people that came in and worked on this house, including the Mosses,” said Roy Dye, engineer for the project.
“Everything you see other than the concrete came in a 15 foot by 3 foot semi truck. When we unpacked the house, there was a box with the light bulbs, the house fixtures, the only thing we didn’t have was toilet paper. In the next house, we’re going to make sure we get some toilet paper.”
Dye said there were about 52 people there to unload the truck and work on the house.
“It took us 3 hours to unload that truck and Coach Shores brought the football team over to unload the truck.”
The dedication ceremony closed with a prayer, and the group was invited to take a tour of the three bedroom home, equipped with hardwood floors, a laundry room and a spacious kitchen.
Mertis Moss is a jail captain at St. Clair County Jail, and her husband, Donald, is currently unemployed but works in the plastering business.
Moss said in addition to their 16-year-old daughter Jasmen, her grandchildren Destin Moss, 10, and Jaylynn Penny, 8, also stay with her and are excited about their new home.
“I worked in the day then came home and we worked at night on the house,” Mertis Moss said. “It was tiring but very rewarding.”
Moss gave a special thanks to everyone in the community who helped work on the house, even some of the inmates from the jail lent a hand.
“My inmates are not bad people. They are good people who have made mistakes, we all make mistakes,” Moss said.
“I am very excited and we are grateful for God’s blessing,” she said.
Contact Aziza Jackson at ajackson@dailyhome.com.
