By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

Henrietta House got a wonderful gift at Christmas time. She got a house. It was a surprise but a most welcome one. And the new house did many things for her life.

I met Henrietta at the Savannah Street Community Center where she works on community projects. The center is smack in the heart of what Atlantans call “Cabbagetown,” which is the old mill community on Boulevard close to Interstate 20.

Henrietta was born in Cabbagetown and, close to the mill, where her mother was employed, she grew up. She showed me the spot where the house of her birth stood.

“It has been pulled down now,” said Henrietta. “I have very fond memories of living there. The house was owned by the mill. But they rented it to us very inexpensively. The mill owned all the houses around here and all the people worked in the mill.”

Cabbagetown and the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill were, in fact, one and the same place. Everybody was connected in some way to the cloth manufacturing at the mill.

But now the mill has closed and the little houses owned and carefully maintained by the mill company were sold. Co-ops bought the small family houses and rented them without giving them proper maintenance. The old families moved. The disrepair can be seen around the old Cabbagetown area.

Henrietta House, who is 37 years old and single, moved into one of the decaying houses and paid rent. “It was awful,” she recalls. “After my years in a nice neighborhood where streets and homes were safe, this was dreadful.”

But she had no quick answers. She had a job at the Savannah Street Center. Where would she move?

Enter Habitat for Humanity into the story. And they had an offer that Henrietta could not and would not refuse.

Henrietta House heard about Habitat through her job. “They sent applications to the community center to see if anyone wished to apply for a house. I never dreamed I would get it, but I applied.”

Habitat is an international ecumenical organization with housing on its mind. And the little band of world movers is not interested in renting homes – they want to sell them. But only to people like Henrietta House who could never qualify for a conventional loan. They sell a house they have acquired, refurbished and made like new to someone who needs it with an interest-free loan for 20 years.

Carolyn Johnson, who is a co-executive director of Habitat along with Barbara Clifford, says the organization now has four houses completed and already occupied. Henrietta is their fifth. “That number,” says Carolyn from Habitat’s office on Peachtree, “will go to 20 in 1986. We don’t usually pick a single person for a house, but this house is very small with only one bedroom. But we know Henrietta is the right person for this house.”

Henrietta House’s new home is on the corner of Woodward close to I-20. It is small, but if any home could be tagged “dream” this is it. On Sunday a dedication was held and all turned out for the official opening. Actually Henrietta has been living in it for a short time. Vandalism is a problem in Cabbagetown in these new times. Henrietta has been there to protect her new dream.

As you drive down Boulevard, past Our Lady of Lourdes Church and school where Father Frank Guista is pastor and president of Habitat, the road narrows as you pass the old graveyard on the right. On the left the great old sprawling mill is being taken down to make room for goodness knows what. You tell yourself that they are really dismantling Cabbagetown. And they are.

But as long as people like Henrietta House and the Habitat dreamers work and plan together, the memories of old communities will live on. They are getting a fresh start as a new life begins in the spanking new habitat of Henrietta House.