In her own unvarnished words, Jasmine Palmer “learned to be a responsible adult” later in life than she would have liked. But after years of “living like an adolescent teenager getting in trouble all the time,” she found herself at a crossroads, separated from her two children and needing to ask herself some hard questions about her future.

With her then 4- and 7-year-old daughters under the care of her mother, Jasmine entered and successfully completed a stringent six-month residential treatment program for substance abuse. She then reunited with her daughters and moved in with her mother, where she remains today as she begins to engage in the “sweat equity” activities in partnership with Habitat for Humanity that will allow her to become a proud and productive homeowner.


Three years clean and with a full-time job as a counselor with a nine-client caseload at the same rehabilitation center she attended, Jasmine is also working to finishing her AA degree at SRJC. Her career goal is to becoming a counselor for women in jail. 
 Having long looked for places to move so she could live independently with her daughters, Jasmine was discouraged by the high housing prices of Sonoma County. Then one day she saw an ad from Habitat for Humanity and she wondered if she might qualify. It turned out she was an ideal candidate: committed, focused, employed, with a clear need for a home but an income gap that could not be bridged without the kind of assistance that Habitat for Humanity provides.
 Over the past few months, she submitted paperwork that included bank statements, credit reports, tax records, recommendations and more. The happy result was approval of her application for a two-bedroom home in the Woodland Hills neighborhood in Cotati, where construction begin this month. Just relating the process makes her grin and glow with pride.

“I did a lot of damage when I was in trouble,” she says. “It was pretty cool to be able to prove that I’d re-established everything. It still doesn’t seem real yet, like it’s too good to be true. But I’m ready to be independent. I’m ready to be Mom again.”