Mariam arrived in Maine from Djibouti with her four children with no money, no job, and nowhere to stay. She was literally starting over again from scratch.

They stayed in a Portland shelter and then a hotel before eventually renting a market-rate apartment in the city. But the rent was barely affordable for Mariam, and getting maintenance requests fulfilled in a timely manner was difficult. Then a friend told her about Avesta Housing. She applied for an apartment, and in July 2018, her family moved into their new home at Unity Village at Bayside.

“I was so desperate, because I had a bad landlord, my apartment was small, and I was a single mother with very low income,” she said. “But when I moved here, the rent was lower, I didn’t have to pay for heat or hot water, and my kids were able to take the bus because we live near the bus station. That helped me a lot.

“I thought, ‘Everything is going to be OK.’”

Mariam is now a receptionist at Hope Acts, a nonprofit organization that provides support to immigrants. All four of her children are in college — two are studying medicine, one is majoring in finance, and the fourth is studying to be an electrical engineer. “I taught all of them, ‘If you don’t work hard, you will have a hard life,’” she said.

She credits Avesta Housing with helping to make it all possible.

“I have friends who are always complaining about their bad landlords,” she said. “I don’t complain, because as a resident of Avesta Housing, I don’t have a reason to.”