Women in Networking donates $5000 to help veterans obtain affordable housing

Early this fall, the Women in Networking (WIN) group continued its support of the Veterans Affordable Housing Program with a $5000 donation which WIN member Doreen Matsumoto requested be used to help veterans obtain affordable housing.

By early November, that $5000 donation assisted two veterans in making down payments for manufactured homes in the Veterans Affordable Housing Program based in Orange, CA.

Three years ago, Santiago Communities Inc. partnered with the nonprofit organization Affordable Housing Living (ACL) to offer this program which has assisted more than 130 veterans to obtain affordable manufactured homes.

“Needless to say, we’re very pleased and excited to learn that two veterans and their wives have been able to move into the comfortable manufactured homes that are “offered to veterans through the Veterans Affordable Housing Program,” Matsumoto said recently.

Garry “Duke” Edmundson, chairman of the ACL Board of Directors, added, “We’re pleased that hard-working groups such as WIN continue to support our long-term mission to help veterans own affordable houses instead of living in relatives’ garages or worse, in the streets.”

And, no one is happier than the two newest veterans who live among the 40 manufactured home communities that ACL and Santiago Communities Inc. oversee in the five western states: Albert Gonzales and his wife of 45 years, Marsha Gonzales and Darryl Beatty and his wife of 40 years Cynthia Temple.

They join more than 600 veterans presently living in those communities.

“To tell you the truth,” said Albert Gonzales during an interview in his manufactured home in Santiago Estates Pedley, north of Highway 60, “My wife and I thought we’d never own a home again, let alone a home as spacious and as nice as this one.”

Speaking from his home in Santiago Parkside Estates in Rialto, Darryl Beatty said, “My wife suffered a fall and was unconscious for more than three weeks. When she fell, we lived in an apartment in Upland.

When she regained consciousness, we had a new house here, thanks to this program.” Gonzales is an Army veteran who served our country for five years and translated his military experience into landing jobs with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, where he produced materials for helicopter blades and other various aircraft components. He and Marsha have two children.

Beatty served three years, 11 months and 27 days in the Marine Corps where he was an F-4 Phantom jet mechanic during the Vietnam War. After a long career as a professional truck driver, he and Cynthia are retired and have three children.