Sherrill Petaway, with uplifting Post-It notes on her scrubs. Sherrill Petaway has spent years looking for a new home. Since July, she’s been engaged in a boot camp of sorts. One that will bulk up her credit so that she can buy a house — sooner rather than later, she hopes.The steepest challenge, as her Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven coach and counselor says, is patience. That coach is Heidie Colon-Rosa, who’s been working with Petaway to find her a dignified and affordable home — preferably in Hamden, Meriden, or Waterbury — that she can own herself. “The most successful homeowners are the ones that know it takes time to achieve their goal,” Colon-Rosa told her at an October 2024 training session.Petaway with relative Annette Gatewood at street naming for her grandmother, Annie Sellers in 2022. (contributed photo.) A spirited 56-year-old who works with the elderly in the nursing field, Petaway grew up in the former Farnam Courts public housing complex, where her grandmother, Annie Sellers, ran the tenant council. Known as a fierce advocate for tenants’ rights, Sellers has a street named after her in the Mill River Crossing decelopment which replaced Farnam in 2022. ​“Back then, she did the Meals on Wheels,” Petaway recalled. ​“She made sure all the seniors were fed. She took care of everyone. She’s my inspiration.”In July 2021, Petaway, a mother of three adult sons, with three grandsons and a granddaughter, saw her Edgewood Avenue apartment burn down in an electrical fire. Under the Uniform Relocation Assistance Act, she qualified for a maximum $4,000 replacement housing payment from the city. While staying with her mother — where she continues to live — she tried for a while to find a new apartment, she said. Each time she found a new place, her credit record closed the door on a rental.At a community meeting with Mandy Management in late May, she shared her plight with a Livable City Initiative (LCI) official. While she had exhausted the one-year eligibility for the $4,000 payment, she learned she qualified for security deposit and utility arrearage assistance. She resumed looking for apartments that week and continued for the next three weeks. A few she found so drab and dismal that she couldn’t imagine living there. Most were out of her price range.That’s no surprise. As a 2023 Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven report showed, the pandemic stalled the steady progress made in affordable housing between 2010 and 2019. Rent prices increased faster than wages. An influx of young people into the city helped spike rents and drop vacancy rates.Sometime in early July, it struck Petaway: she had a steady income. She had a place to live. Why rent when she could buy? She found a deal online with a mortgage lender. It seemed too good to be true. A co-worker told her it was. Then he told her about Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS).In late July, Petaway met with Colon-Rosa, a coordinator in the NHSHomeOwnership Center which provides prospective homebuyers with coaching and counseling services in money management, credit, budgeting, and foreclosure prevention.Colon-Rosa asked about her goals. ​“I want to buy my own house by my birthday,” Petaway said. Her birthday would be in October. “I wish I could snap my fingers and say ​‘here is that house of your own,’ but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way,” she told Petaway, as she handed her a copy of her credit report. ​“It’s a process.”“Your credit scores are not horrible,” she began. That said, the higher the credit score, the more downpayment programs Petaway could qualify for, and that meant a better mortgage and overall better affordability. The goal, a score of 660, would take some work. ​“Here’s how we’re going to get you there,” Colon-Rosa said. First were the three accounts in collections in the credit report. None of them had to be paid back entirely, Colon Rosa told Petaway. ​“Any amount that these collection agencies can make is a plus for them,” she said. Petaway’s homework: contact each and offer a figure for settlement. She told Petaway to open a credit card account and then use it for one expense each month — she suggested gas — and pay it off each month. ​“That will show the bank you can borrow money and pay it off every month,” she said. And keep saving, she said. Petaway needed at least $6,500 in her bank account for a house investment. “I can do all that,” Petaway said, nodding, a smile lighting her face. ​“I’m going to get my house.” Over the next months — and through two more training sessions — the optimism dulled. A phone number for one of the collection agencies on her credit report wasn’t working. She settled with the two other agencies but neither sent her a settlement letter, a crucial piece of evidence on the credit report. There was a delay in getting a credit card. Then, in late November, there was a financial setback. Petaway had been working 70-hour weeks and had amassed $6,500 in savings by then. It left her behind schedule on her savings plan and she was slated to meet with Colon-Rosa the next week. ​“I just don’t want to let her down,” she said over the telephone, her voice downcast. To uplift her spirits that day, she stuck colorful Post-Its on her scrubs with positive messages that read DREAMBIG and TRUSTTHEPROCESS and I AMAWESOME. ​“Life lifes,” Colon-Rosa told her the next week, before praising her progress. ​“You should be extremely proud of yourself,” she said, of Petaway’s discipline in putting money away. ​“This means you really want it.”In fact, the ​“boot camp” mentality seemed to energize her elsewhere. She shared with Colon-Rosa that she was resuming classes at Goodwin College to become a drug and alcohol counselor. ​“These are people I can help because I’ve been there,” she said. And she has an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for a cleaning business she plans to open.As for the house, ​“I just have to keep at it,” she said, as she exited NHS in mid-December. ​“Just keep at it.”NHS Homeownership Center Housing Coordinator Heidie Colon-Rosa, with Petaway.