Mom builds career in medical field to provide foundation for purchase of Habitat home

Nikita is working her way through her list of life goals.

Go back to school? Check. Get on a successful career path? Check. Purchase a home? That’s where Habitat Orlando & Osceola comes in.

For years, Nikita worked 13-hour shifts in food service at a Central Florida hospital. She took orders and delivered meals to patients. When she had her daughter 10 years ago, she knew it was time for a change.

When her daughter turned 2, she enrolled in school to become a medical assistant.

“I wanted to do something better, and my daughter is my first priority, so everything I do is to make sure she’s OK,” Nikita said.

But bettering her life and career meant going to school Monday to Thursday while keeping her 13-hour shifts Friday to Sunday.

The grueling schedule paid off when she earned her certification and moved up – literally upstairs at the hospital – to help care for the patients that she previously delivered food to.

“I went from working, just a basic minimum wage job to a career and pretty much reaching all the little goals that I’ve had,” she said.

The next goal is buying a home for her and her daughter. The single mom said she couldn’t find a safe home that was also affordable on the open market. That’s when her sister reminded her about Habitat for Humanity.

Nikita applied in 2022 but didn’t make the cut off. Then after working hard to get all her ducks in a row, she applied again in December 2023 and is now set to close on her brand-new Habitat home sponsored by Publix Super Market Charities, later this year.

Nikita said going through the educational process involved in purchasing a Habitat home has been invaluable. She’s learned how loans work, how to maintain her home, and what escrow means, among many other things through Habitat U.

“I’m very grateful for those classes because I wouldn’t have known what I know now … I feel really confident,” she said.

Between the support of the Habitat team and her family, Nikita said she’s ready to take on her next goal of homeownership.

“Since I was little, I’ve known that if [my family] is confident in me then I can be confident in myself,” Nikita said. “They inspire me to do better and if I have a goal, go out and reach that goal. And I see my daughter and my daughter inspires me to do that for her.”

Nikita said purchasing her home will free her from constantly rising rents and give her daughter a stable place to call home.

“I’m looking forward to her just having a stable place that she can grow up in, and when she goes off to college she’d come home to that same place … Just knowing that … it’s just the best thing.”