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Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity breaks ground on ‘Women Build’ home in Coralville for local immigrant family
The lot was purchased from the city by Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity last summer
Jul. 18, 2025 5:33 pm, Updated: Jul. 21, 2025 8:35 am
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CORALVILLE — Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity broke ground Thursday on its first “Women Build” home in Coralville. By the end of this year, organizers hope to have taught more women how to build while constructing a house for a local family that came to the United States 10 years ago in search of a safer, more stable life.
The house is being built at 708 Ninth Ave., on a lot bought by Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity from the City of Coralville last summer. The organization paid $25,000 for the property after the city approached them to suggest the purchase.
“I want to say thank you to everybody that supports this amazing organization,” Coralville Mayor Meghan Foster said at the groundbreaking. “And I just have to say, I want to see more of this in Coralville. Affordable housing is something that's very important to me, we need a lot of different tools to get that done and this is a really important one.”
“Without their partnership and their work with us, we just wouldn't have been able to build here,” Scott Hawes, executive director of Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity said of the city at the groundbreaking. “So that decision to support our work was really important and instrumental in helping us.”
Build honors longtime volunteers
While Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity has built other homes in Coralville over the last 33 years of its existence — and it has organized other Women Build projects — but this will be its first Women Build house in Coralville.
Each Women Build project has designated honorees. This one honors to longtime Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity volunteers: Linda Barrow and Wai Yin Chan.
Barrow — nicknamed “Digger” — has been a part of Women Build since 2005. She’s a self-taught carpenter with nearly 40 years of remodeling experience who’s being honored for her commitment to the organization and willingness to train new volunteers.
“She comes with a wealth of knowledge, with a heart full of giving, and just the person that I'm very happy to call one of my best friends, and you'll find her on the job site almost every day as well,” Jane Hagedorn, Women Build Committee member, said of Barrow.
Yin Chan got involved in the organization in 2008 after the floods. Members of the Women Build Committee said she’s known for her commitment to keeping a safe work site and attention to detail.
“She's the quiet one with the broom. She was in the trailer today that has all of our work tools and supplies over, cleaning all the hats with a damp cloth, ordering everything where it needed to be, backing into her own little private world,” Barrow said of Yin Chan.
Immigrant family will move in later this year
When completed, the home will be bought by Mohamed and Shaza, a couple with four children who immigrated to the U.S. from Sudan through the Diversity Visa Program in 2015.
Mohamed was an engineer in Sudan, and now works as a machine operator in a factory. Shaza recently completed her studies to become a dental assistant. They and their children have lived in an apartment in Coralville since 2018. They said it’s safe, but it’s becoming cramped.
“My goal was safety. And good schools,” Mohamed is quoted as saying in a news release about the build. “This is my investment in my kids. I want to send them on the right track. Invest in them better so they can do better. They say the kids are affected positively or negatively by their surroundings, so this is a very important thing.”
Habitat for Humanity houses are built and sold to qualified applicants. Each adult in the household contributes 250 hours of sweat equity — time spent serving the Habitat for Humanity mission — as a down payment for the house.
“We'll all go home tonight, go to our nice house, go in where we know things are ours and the gracious things,” Barrow said at Thursday’s groundbreaking. “We'll do our routine and go to bed safely and not have to worry about anything. In December, I hope we give the keys to Mohamed and his family so that they can do the very same thing.”
Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com
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