At the subdivision overlooking Whitehall, the October afternoon wind blusters and a snow squall rolls across the surrounding hills. Inside Becky Robinson’s home, an inviting warmth fills the rooms. “This is all that is heating the house right now,” says Robinson, pointing to the wall-mounted electric fireplace in her living room. A tour of the home makes it clear that even the back bedrooms are warm. That is one of the things Robinson says she loves about the new home she moved into about two years ago.
A bank teller in Ennis, she previously lived in an uninsulated pre- 1976 rented trailer. The wind howled through the trailer walls, she says. Her monthly heating bill averaged $135 a month. Now the heating dollars can be counted on her fingers. Robinson, 65, says she has worked all of her life but simply could never afford to buy a home in Ennis.
“Everything was either so expensive I couldn’t afford it or so old you’d have to tear it down and start again,” she says. When she learned about an affordable housing project in the works in Whitehall, she knew it was her chance. The National Affordable Housing Network (NAHN) out of Butte was developing the Mountain Horizons project and Robinson wasted no time applying. A lot of people take about three years from the time of application to move in, says Barbara Miller, NAHN co-founder.
