Housing Assistance Changes Lives

Tara Vargas Wallace

Living in a shelter for teenage mothers with her 2-year-old daughter, Tara Vargas Wallace was taking courses at Cape Cod Community College and needed to complete an internship to graduate. 
She applied at Housing Assistance and started out helping at the front desk.  
  
“It was like the skies opened up and my world was about to change,” she said. A few months later, she was hired as an administrative assistant. “I chose HAC and in turn HAC chose me. I wouldn’t be where I am right now if it weren’t for Housing Assistance, its programs, and the caring compassionate staff that treated me with dignity and saw the potential in me that I didn’t see in myself.”  
  
She also became a client, getting a Section 8 certificate and graduating from the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program. “Section 8 was extremely helpful for me while I was raising my family, going to school, working fulltime and trying to rise up out of poverty,” she said. “Housing Assistance gave me the life skills, education and tools that I needed to eventually be off of all social programs.”  
  
Over the years, she shifted into other jobs at Housing Assistance, including Section 8 representative and FSS coordinator. Eventually, she was asked to be on the Housing Assistance’s board’s constituency committee, her first experience on a nonprofit board.  
  
In 2020, she founded and became CEO of Amplify POC a local nonprofit that is “dedicated to amplifying the growth and success of historically excluded communities,” according to its mission statement. Its programs include workshops on Business 101, wealth building and financial empowerment, as well as leadership training and immigration advocacy. 
  
“Housing Assistance is where I nurtured my passion for social justice. I would never have thought to be on a board until someone asked me. That was where I learned the power of my voice and how sharing my story and sharing my experience could impact the way that policies and decisions are made.” 

Adam Gracia

Adam Gracia’s first interactions with Housing Assistance were as a professional colleague, working for an organization that helps find housing for veterans who were in transition and unhoused.  

“Then life happens, and I was in between positions and my finances were not the best,” he said. He contacted Housing Assistance to find out about the agency’s mortgage assistance program. “It was nice to know that there was an empathetic organization that would hear my story, and understand the problems that I was facing. The incredible staff alleviated all of the barriers. They just said, ‘Tell us your story and let’s find a way to help you out.’” 

Last year, Gracia, who had served in the Army National Guard in Bosnia, was overseas again with the Ukrainian International Legion, when his wife let him know that their home’s heating system had failed in the dead of winter. 

“My family was warming up water in five-gallon buckets to take baths,” he said. “It was great to be able to tell my wife to call Housing Assistance and talk to our case manager from before. I knew it was going to be the same warm welcome. It was going to be the same empathetic ear… that same pragmatic approach that says, all right, here’s the issues that you’re facing and these are the solutions that we can try to implement.”  

Grateful for the help he received, Gracia, deputy director of Care for the Cape and Islands, a local environmentally focused nonprofit, is now a monthly donor. “Housing Assistance advocates for a community that is accessible to all,” he said. “It’s not just the people on the coast in Chatham. It’s the service worker on Main Street Hyannis. It may be your grandmother. It may be your teacher. Housing Assistance Corporation keeps Cape Codders on Cape Cod.”  

Ann Rebello

Having worked for Housing Assistance for 29 years, executive assistant Ann Rebello said she feels “very blessed” to be part of the agency’s team.  

“We’re all here just for a little while and being able to make a difference while you’re here is a pretty big deal,” 

she said. “I worked at the front desk for a long time and I saw lives change completely – people, and I’m one of them, who never  thought they’d be able to own a home or get themselves out of debt and gain stability. Our programs work miracles.  

“Housing Assistance has empathy. We are creative. We think outside the box. We look at the big picture and we try to help you find the steps through it. I just can’t imagine Cape Cod without Housing Assistance.” 

Rebello recalled being a single mother who was unable to pay her rent. Ater living with another family member, she took Housing Assistance’s first-time homebuyer class, even though she didn’t think she could afford to buy a house.  

But she could and she did, purchasing a deed-restricted home 11 years ago. She lives about a minute and a half from her daughter, a special needs teacher who works for the Yarmouth school system. “I have two grandsons, and they ride their bikes over to see me,” she said. “Every day when I pull in that driveway, I still cannot believe that I own a house. I wake up in the morning and I can walk out to my kitchen and make a cup of tea and I don’t have to worry about when I go to the mailbox, is there going to be a letter in there, we’re raising your rent beyond what you can pay, too bad, or we’re selling your house. I don’t have to worry about that. I have something to leave for my daughter and my grandkids. 

“That’s what Housing Assistance does. It helps a person change their life and the effects can last for generations.”