Finding purpose in meeting a need

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, June 12th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a woman, a tool belt and a heart for the needy!

Housing experts say we have an affordable housing deficit. And national statistics, back that up. For every 100 extremely low-income renters in the US, only 35 affordable rental homes are available.

BROWN: Mary, I met a woman around our age, doing her part to close that gap.

SOUND: Circular saw

MYRNA BROWN: Standing in red dirt, under a canopy of tall trees, Allena Williams steadies her hand and tightens her grip. That’s how the petite 51-year-old is able to cut through pieces of wood with a circular saw.

SOUND: [Framing nail gun]

It’s also how she drives nails into that wood with a framing gun. But there’s one aspect of homebuilding she’s still getting used to.

WILLIAMS: I used to wouldn’t wear a tool belt. It was aggravating. I was like, I don’t want nothing on my hips. Finally, this year. I went to the flea market and bought this.

Williams’ second-hand tool belt is black with at least a dozen pockets and pouches. So, how does a middle-aged woman with no construction experience end up in this line of work?

When the Ohio native relocated to Alabama, she never imagined she’d be carrying around carpentry tools at all. She moved to teach at a local college and invest in real estate on the side. She still remembers the day she arrived back in April 2020.

WILLIAMS: COVID! It was a ghost town here. Everybody was in the house hiding.

COVID shuttered the college and stalled her dreams of flipping houses. After weeks of isolation, Williams ventured out and started working as an Uber driver.

WILLIAMS: So, that’s how I got out and about to meet people and felt like I wasn’t so alone in a place where I knew no one.

She enjoyed meeting her neighbors. But she found their circumstances troubling.

WILLIAMS: It was sad that I was picking up old people. Some people were in their fifties, but the majority were sixties and seventies that were asking me to pick them up from a motel because their first of the month check had run out and they could no longer afford the weekly rate for the rent at the motel.

And the requests became even more disturbing.

WILLIAMS: So they would say, drop me off at an abandoned building and I’m going to stay here until my check comes in a week or so and then I’m going to go back to the hotel and repeat this cycle.

Williams couldn’t get that cycle out of her head.

WILLIAMS: Well, I was just confused…why was there no affordable housing here? Started networking with people, talking with the Council on Aging and the housing authority and they confirmed, we don’t have enough units to support that.

Eventually, the college reopened and Williams started her teaching job. But her plans to flip houses? Those car conversations had changed all of that.

WILLIAMS: So, in my mind I was like, Lord this has to be a sign. Maybe I need to work on doing construction for these people.

Williams decided to provide affordable rental space for the elderly and veterans in need in her community. She bought land in the next county over, found an old camper, relocated it to her property and refurbished it for her first occupant.

WILLIAMS: The first person was Richard, a veteran from Birmingham. So he said he could afford $400 a month. He had not learned how to cope with life and so he was using substances. But what I learned from him was that I needed wrap-around services. Because it’s not just a house that they need.

Wrap-around services, things like counseling and financial planning. She started collaborating with college students in those fields. But Williams also wanted to learn how to help people with her own two hands.

WILLIAMS: So I learned that I had to network and get some advocates and people to help me with my guests when they come.

Williams found one of those advocates after putting out an SOS on a dating app.

WILLIAMS: And I said, hey I’m here from Ohio. I’m not here for dating. I’m here to find somebody who could teach me construction. If this is you, please reach out. So, needless to say, several guys were like, oh it’s me. But they really just didn’t care. But Raphael really showed me.

STANLEY: This the back side. It’s going to fall. So you don’t have nothing back there. All your overhanging is up here.

That's Raphael Stanley, a professional home builder. It was his idea to start building tiny homes.

STANLEY: I see the vision. And I have seen her put a lot of stuff together and it works. So I believe in what she is doing.

A partnership was born.

WILLIAMS: He taught me drywall. He taught me carpentry. How to have the confidence. I had no confidence to work those saws. I was scared to death. And he taught me roofing. And he taught me some plumbing and how to do flooring and baseboards, trim, install doors.

With all of those skills under her belt, Williams and Stanley built their first tiny home in 2023.

WILLIAMS: I really stayed in shock I think for at least a year and a half that I could do this. I just couldn’t believe it. I really just couldn’t believe it.

They built a second home in 2024. This summer, she’ll have a third 8 by 12 foot tiny house, complete with heat, air, and plumbing.

AUDIO: We’re putting the support in, so the rafters are sturdy . So when we put the wooden roof on it won’t collapse. That’s the goal today.

So far, Williams has helped put roofs over the heads of eight people, men and women. She wants to do more but she has some problems to address. One of them: location.

WILLIAMS: A lot of them don’t want to come to Stockton. They say, you in the sticks. Or they say, you in the woods, girl. {laughter]

She plans to buy land and build tiny homes in more populated areas so she can help more people. But she says as a woman of faith, her goal isn’t to draw attention to herself or build another housing empire.

WILLIAMS: Everybody has a purpose and it’s connected to helping others.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Stockton, Alabama.

SOUND: [Sawing]

REICHARD: Myrna produced a companion piece on Allena Williams and her tiny homes for WORLD Watch, our video news program for students. We’ve posted a link to that story in our transcript.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.