 "Photo: Jordy Wagoner/The Daily Texan")
 "Photo: Jordy Wagoner/The Daily Texan")
Construction workers, lawyers, family and friends packed into the house they built for Tamika Nobles and her family at a dedication ceremony Wednesday.
Volunteers from Habitat for Humanity and the Austin Bar Association spent countless hours constructing the new home on Towbridge Circle.
Founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit Christian ministry that works with volunteers to build and restore houses for families in need. The organization relies on volunteer labor and donated materials, according to the group’s Web site.
Legal Build, a collaboration between the Austin legal community and Austin Habitat for Humanity, worked to raise money as well as walls for the Nobles’ home.
“This was extraordinary, rewarding and an uplifting experience for Tamika,” said Mishell Kneeland, Texas assistant attorney general and chairwoman of Legal Build.
According to Habitat’s Web site, each new homeowner invests hundreds of hours of their own labor into their house and helps build other Habitat houses. Nobles worked on her house for 400 hours.
Nobles was overwhelmed with emotion at the dedication. A representative from the Capital Area Food Bank presented Nobles with a traditional housewarming gift of a basket containing wine, bread, salt and a candle.
“This is the best house in the history of Habitat for Humanity,” Nobles said.
According to the Habitat Web site, the organization is dedicated to “eliminating substandard housing and homelessness worldwide and to making adequate, affordable shelter a matter of conscience and action.”
“It’s a blessing to see this and help to grow a better community,” said Michael Willard, executive director of Austin Habitat for Humanity.
Nobles and her extended family and friends came together to celebrate the new home.
“It feels good to have one more house behind us and a family having the opportunity to have a place of their own,” said construction project manager Jesse Porter.
In keeping with tradition, Nobles passed on her hammer to the next family to receive a Habitat house.
“Now, I have something I can call my own,” she said.
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