Education is the reason I believe in affordable housing. The mixed-income multi-family developments are a great idea. Children learn best when they have safe housing and food security. Safe, secure housing is costly and in short supply. By providing affordable housing, we help families to set up their children for success. We need to ensure that children are educated for today’s world. How we as a society treat these children and their families is a significant factor in whether at-risk children become people we invite into our businesses and homes or become the reason we lock our doors.

My family believed that education was the key to bettering one’s life. My father’s family were farmers who made sure the girls attended school. My father’s great grandmother was the only educated person in the area and at age 14 she taught all grades in a one-room schoolhouse. My father’s mother was a schoolteacher. My mother’s father only had an eighth-grade education and spent his adult life studying and learning on his own. My mother was a schoolteacher.

As children, my sister and I raced for the Encyclopedia Britannica to see who could find an answer first when our parents told us to “look it up” instead of giving us answers. Almost all our toys were educational. Our parents put a kill-switch type lock on the TV to keep us from watching it. We spent hours searching for that key but not watching TV.

Today, I have a passion for learning. I loved school and I want that for all children. I am a second-career attorney and attended law school later in life with the same passion for learning I had as a child. I also love real estate and blame my parents for teaching us to play Monopoly. Affordable housing helps address a serious need through real estate.