From their Habitat for Humanity application :

"To whom this may concern, the reason for my letter as you know is because we would like to own a Habitat Home. Let me tell you a little bit of our story. We are a family of four, my husband Jose, Dianna (7), Abigail (2 ½) and me Leslie. For three years my husband and I have been renting in some apartments. And we finally realized we are not getting anywhere like that, we are spending too much on something we know will never be ours and it is not a good community for the girls.
I am going to begin with the condition of the apartment.

The apartment itself is not in good condition, the walls touching with the roof are cracking open and seems like they could fall. We cannot use all the outlets to plug in things because half of them don’t work. I’ve had a broken window which I told the people in the office before hurricane Wilma and until now it is still the same (broke.) The tub has a crack in it and they haven’t replaced it. Instead they only fill it up with glue and the girls are afraid to take a bath because of that. We have a lot of roaches and black ants. You can turn off the light at night and turn it back on in seconds and you can see them crawling everywhere. I’ve tried to get rid of them by buying different methods to kill them but it’s impossible, they are too much. One time I had to take Abigail to the doctor’s office because she was sick and they told me to take good care of her because she had symptoms of asthma.

It’s sad to say that we do not know anybody around not even our neighbors because of the fact that they see you and they walk into their apartments or you try to talk to them and they ignore you. There are times that the girls go out to play but they have to come back in five minutes because the other kids hit them or make fun of them so we have to bring them back in. It really scares me to let them go out to play because of the fact that that we live upstairs and they might fall down the stairs. So they really have a limited place to play. They cannot have a bike or a scooter like the other kids because they don’t have anywhere to ride them. Or if they try to play inside the neighbors from downstairs start to complain about the noise so they can’t play inside or outside.

I am also afraid to let them play outside because there are a lot of bad people out there. One day I was inside the apartment with the girls and the next thing you know the SWAT team and a lot of cops were around our building and the building in front because they were trying to find some guys who were selling drugs and guns. Since that day I knew it wasn’t safe. Another thing, the garbage tanks are always full and the people throw their garbage on the floor which makes everything a mess and makes a bad smell.

Going back to the girls, I would like them to grow up in a healthy and friendly community. One question Dianna always asks me is “When are we going to have a place where we can call home?” The bad part is that we never have the answer. So now you have heard our story. Thank you for your time. We truly appreciate it and I hope you can consider us for one of your most needed homes.”

Leslie, Jose and the girls recently closed on their home in the Immokalee community of Independence.