Attainable Homes Calgary Corporation - AHCC Fall Contest Winner

Owning a home in Calgary can be THIS EASY!

The goal of our Attainable Home Ownership Program is to develop 1,000 well-appointed, entry-level homes at a price attainable for individuals and families earning $53,000 - $80,000 in household income annually. We will meet this target through our business plan that provides for quality, entry-level housing for hundreds of working Calgarians and their families caught in the growing affordability gap.

Rising house prices have locked out everyday people from owning a home including nurses, teachers, truck drivers, accountants, computer programmers and mechanics -- citizens who make Calgary thrive and the kind of people we must retain and recruit to ensure this great city's vibrancy and prosperity.

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AHCC Fall Contest Winner

AHCC would like to congratulate Lisa Christensen, the winner of our Fall Contest and the $100 IKEA Gift Certificate!

We would also like to thank everyone for taking the time to send us your submissions; the stories were great which made it a tough decision.

AHCC staff member and Fall Contest winner Lisa Christensen.

This is Lisa’s story:

It’s Everywhere!

My soon to be husband and I, along with our friend decided to get a place together. We found a neat little duplex that would accommodate us just nicely and when we did the walk through our nice new landlord pointed out the complimentary shop vac. That should have raised a red flag, but it didn't.

It started out well enough, it was the tail end of winter and we settled into our new house. By the time spring rolled around things started to go downhill a bit. First, there was water coming out from underneath the walls which soaked a bunch of our roommates movies. No worries, we fixed the downspouts so that wouldn't happen anymore. Problem solved. Or so we thought.

One day we came home to find that the sewage drain had backed up and a quarter of the basement was covered in poop. We vacuumed it all up and fought with the City of Calgary for a few days about who's problem it was. Meanwhile, we showered and used the toilet at our friend's place (who just happened to live in the other half of the duplex) to avoid aggravating the problem. Finally it turned out that the reason the sewage kept backing up is because the problem was coming from the half of the duplex we had been using for all of our water.

Since the problem turned out to be inside the foundations of the houses, we lived with sewage flooding into the basement (at the most inconvenient times, like, when we had guests or when we were out of town for the weekend and the sewage just sat there rotting for four days). We dealt with that for about a year, every time it happened we would quickly advise our friend (and neighbour) in the adjoining duplex that she should avoid doing laundry for a bit and she was nice enough to refrain from doing her washing, her dishes and taking long showers.

If the sewage backups weren't bad enough, we started flooding from the sinks and toilets in the basement. Which officially meant we had dealt with flooding out of every orifice possible in the basement. Congratulations to us! At least we had our shop vac.

Meanwhile, on the top level of the house, we were dealing with other hilariously bad housing issues. The first being the electrical outlets in the house. Some fried every electronic device we plugged into them. Some didn't work at all and some made horrendous noises when you used them. No worries, we could use one single outlet for every electronic device in the living room, that's safe enough right?

When winter came along we had bigger problems though. The master bedroom that the soon to be husband and I had scored turned out to be colder than our refrigerator. Seriously. If the bedroom door was kept closed in the winter the temperature would dip to just above freezing. The lowest recorded temperature was 4C before we gave up and opened the door again (we bought a thermometer so we could make facebook posts about how much tougher we are than all of our friends) During the winter we would sleep with two pairs of pajamas, two pairs of socks, toques and four blankets. This may or may not be why we were able to remain childless for so long. We survived through two winters and because of that, we are able to begin camping season earlier than most of you. There's a silver lining to be found anywhere.

After about a year and a half when the constant flooding became too much to handle, the stress and bickering about constant poo cleaning came to a head and we decided it was time to leave the house. We're happy to report that we are now living in a much newer, warmer, drier and oddly similarly priced home. And we have more grounded outlets than we could ever use.