Jewel_and_Truck.jpg
Jewel pauses to give an encouraging word.

By staff reports

Jewel Still, a single mother of two young boys and a resident of Hillcrest Apartments, has been working as a water-meter reader for the City of Asheville since August of 2007. When she relocated from Miami last spring with a two-year-old and a newborn, she was grateful for her public housing apartment. “The public housing developments in Asheville are most like condos compared to where I was living in Miami,” said Jewel.

When Jewel learned
about the Asheville Housing Authority’s Employment and Training Program
offered to public housing residents, she immediately attended an
information session. There she found out about the resources available
to her for childcare, job searching, and home ownership. Jewel could
have entered a social service program and stayed at home with her two
boys, but she has dreams of home ownership and decided to seek
employment. She is also a participant in the housing authority’s Family
Self Sufficiency Program, which will help her to accomplish her dream
of home ownership.

Reading
at least 280 water meters a day keeps her very busy: one day, she says
with pride, she read 452. One of the things she likes about the job is
traveling to different locations around the city. Some days she can
look up at the beauty and splendor of the surrounding mountains and
feel inspired, on other days she can look down from a mountain onto the
city below.

Jewel
plans to attend AB Tech Community College, then transfer to a four-year
university to study psychology. She wants to work with children and be
a motivational speaker, which in some ways she already is. She already
has a positive message for young mothers in public housing: “Don’t give
up. Never think that this is all there is.”

Congratulations, Jewel, and much success in your future.

For
information about the Housing Authority’s Employment & Training
Program, call Wallace Bohanan at (828) 258-1222, ext 2652.

To learn about the Authority’s Home Ownership Program, call Terrie Williams at (828) 258-1222, ext 2258.