Sep. 13—With her 16-month-old son perched on her hip, Alisha Moon walked up the steps onto a wood porch and into a former storage building transformed into a tiny home. Moon, who will move into the home in a couple of weeks with her son, imagined tucking him into bed at night, cooking him dinner on the stove and watching him run around the new playground from her front porch.
“This is everything I ever dreamed of. I never imagined this could be my life,” said Moon, a recovering addict.
When Moon and her son, Braxton Oliver, move into the home, they will be the first residents of LifeSource’s Mom and Me Tiny House Village in Somerville.
The vision for the Mom and Me Tiny House Village originated with Robin Ladner, founder of LifeSource, a residential drug recovery program.
“We didn’t set out to be a women’s and children’s home. It just happened because we kept saying ‘Yes.’ ‘Yes, we will take in a pregnant woman.’ ‘Yes, we will take in a mother and her child,'” Ladner said. “Little by little, God has really overflowed us with mothers and their children.”
Now, 10 to 12 children live with their mothers at the transition home.
To Ladner, who saw a dozen children taking baths in the facility’s sole tub each night, the Mom and Me Tiny House Village, which sits behind the transition home, made sense.
“These homes are a space for moms to bond with their kids. Some of these women have never had their own place to live their life with their child,” Ladner said.
One of those women is Moon.
A year ago, the 41-year-old Moon arrived at LifeSource after being released from jail.
“When I was pregnant with Braxton, I was using. He had to go to the NICU, and I lost custody of him. He went to foster care, and I went to jail,” Moon said. “When I came out of jail, I went back to using.”
When a CASA worker contacted Moon about the possibility of Moon connecting with Braxton, she pleaded for help.
“I told her that if I didn’t get to a rehab or somewhere safe, I was going to continue to use and lose custody of my son. When she asked if I had a place in mind, I said LifeSource,” Moon said.
Once at LifeSource, Moon devoted her life to regaining custody of her son.
“I stayed focused on trying to do whatever the Department of Human Resources wanted me to do. I focused on God and keeping my trust in him,” said Moon, who has been clean for a year and works at Wendy’s.
On May 15, the Thursday after Mother’s Day, Braxton came out of foster care and returned to living with Moon.
“When I lost custody of Braxton, I was completely lost. I felt like a failure. I felt like I failed my baby. I was just broken,” Moon said. “When I learned I got custody, it was awesome. And now, I am going to be able to move into a home with Braxton. Without God, none of this would have been possible.”
Ladner agreed.
God is the reason she founded LifeSource, an outreach ministry that provided recovery programs, a food pantry and continuing education classes, in Decatur in 2011. And God is the reason she established a transition house in Somerville in 2018.
“I had somebody call me one day and say, ‘You need to get a transition house.’ I didn’t even know what that was. Then older moms would call me saying, ‘My daughter is getting out of jail and I don’t have anywhere for her to go and she can’t come home.’ They didn’t know what to do and, at the time, I didn’t know what to do either,” Ladner said.
The transition homes Ladner started in order to provide safe places for women and men now has a waiting list of 100. — ‘The need is great’
“The need is great and we want to provide as many solutions for everybody as we possibly can without compromising the integrity of the program. That’s why we started the Mom and Me Tiny House Village,” Ladner said.
Last October, Ladner and Nikki Nayman, a graduate and staff member of LifeSource, pitched the idea of the village to Mazda Toyota Manufacturing.
“It was kind of like ‘Shark Tank,'” Nayman said.
The pitch, which included a video of nine mothers detailing the importance of the homes, convinced Mazda Toyota Manufacturing to award LifeSource a grant.
In a couple of weeks, Alisha and Braxton will move into the 14-by-36-foot $15,000 Mazda Toyota Manufacturing House.
“We never imagined this would move as fast as it has,” Ladner said. “One of the hardest things for me is I hate asking for stuff, but I’ve gotten better at it. For a long time, I just tried to do everything on my own. Now I’m getting better at realizing people want to help. People we don’t even know have knocked on a door asking how they can help with the village.”
Cerrowire donated the wire, Kenny Pike donated plumbing material, Triple B Plumbing donated the labor for the plumbing, Gobble Fite donated the lumber and the men in LifeSource’s men’s program have worked on the homes. Organizations also signed up to help furnish the homes. LifeSource also received a grant from Alabama Mountains Rivers and Valleys Resource Conservation and Development Council.
“People want to help mothers and children. They want to see mothers and children safe and succeed in life and have the opportunities we give them here,” Ladner said. “This is a cause everyone wants to get behind. It has been amazing to watch.”
Transforming the storage buildings into tiny houses includes installing a stove top, sink, cabinets, a heating and cooling unit, windows and a bathroom, laying down floor, putting in a new septic tank and building front porches onto the homes.
For the first phase of the village, Ladner envisioned eight tiny homes.
“We already decided we want to do a phase 2. That’s just how big of a need this is and how much support we are receiving from the community,” Ladner said.
LifeSource determines who will move into the homes based on seniority and need.
“Some women come here and have a plan. They may have a family or a spouse they can go back to. But if they don’t have a safe space to go back to, these tiny homes can work for them,” Ladner said.
Nayman, who entered LifeSource’s women’s program three years ago, will move into the village’s second home, a 14-by-48-foot two-bedroom estimated to cost $22,000, with her two daughters.
“I am most excited about the kids coming home from school and having something cooking in the Crock-Pot and eating with them,” Nayman said. “This will be our safe space.”
As long as the women comply with the program, they can live in the houses as long as needed.
“If they want to live here and are thriving in life, they can stay here as long as they want. They can be here 10 years if they want to. We just want to help them raise their children in a good and safe environment,” Ladner said.
Providing that “good and safe environment” led Ladner to build the Mom and Me Tiny House Village behind LifeSource’s transition home.
“Staying here is so much better and safer for the women. They don’t have to worry about going back to their old stomping grounds and having old acquaintances pressuring them,” Ladner said. “Having the homes on the property helps the women as far as keeping them accountable and giving them support.”
Plans for the village include completing the remaining homes, clearing the area behind the first phase and putting in a driveway behind the houses. Individuals interested in assisting can contact Ladner at lifesourcemail@gmail.com, or mailing checks to LifeSource, 4616 Alabama 67 S., Somerville, AL, 35670.
“These homes help us fulfill our mission. We want these women to accept Christ and have a personal relationship with Jesus. We want them to live out the purpose God created them to live. For the women in the Mom and Me Tiny House Village, part of that is being a mom,” Ladner said.
— cgodbey@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2441.