The roof at Towanna Wright’s home in Capitol Heights, Maryland, has been leaking for the last few years. Inside the doorway is a water-stained ceiling, and a crack that’s been getting longer and longer going across it.
In recent months, the water coming through it had been getting even worse.
The problem is getting a new roof can be expensive, but not too expensive for a community that wants to help. Her neighbor, Phyllis Wright (no relation) was able to get her in touch with the Prince George’s County Community Development Corporation, which heard her plight and stepped in to help.
“It was real bad,” Towanna Wright said. “The weather recently was the worst with the storms and things that we had gotten, and the leaks started coming through even more.”
Then she showed off the ceiling inside.
“I had taped plastic up and made it as like a funnel to go down into a bucket,” she said.
Towanna Wright isn’t the tallest person in the world, and needed a ladder to reach the ceiling.
“This was the best I can do to capture water.”
Towanna Wright is a spiritual woman and repeatedly said she put her plight in God’s hands, hoping to find a solution. That’s when her neighbor, Phyllis Wright, got Towanna in touch with the Prince George’s County Community Development Corporation, through the office of council member Calvin Hawkins.
“It was a little leak when I first noticed it,” Phyllis Wright said. “And I knew that this was an emergency situation that I needed to get some help for her.”
She had done something similar to this before, helping another older neighbor with a similar situation last year. Hawkins said the county needs more people like Phyllis willing to go to the mat for their neighbors.
“Prince George’s, do something for your neighbor or family member, even a stranger, because that’s what we’re all about,” Hawkins said. “Let’s keep making Prince George’s County better.”
They were able to hire Lindsay Roofing to do the job Friday, ahead of a blast of winter weather that was due to move through that afternoon, which itself might be a prelude to something even bigger that could come at the end of the weekend.
And for Towanna, with winter about to rear its head, all of this means two things:
“The house will be warmer,” she said. “And the bills will go down.”
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