After surviving addiction, sex trafficking, three Thistle Farms grads are getting houses

Nashville nonprofit Thistle Farms has helped women survivors of sex trafficking and addiction find healing, community, jobs, apartments, education and more for decades.

Now the popular program is providing critical assistance for something most of its participants thought they'd never have — home ownership.

Next Friday morning, April 19, in a ceremony likely to be filled with balloons and tears, Thistle Farms is set to present three new houses in North Nashville to program graduates. The homes aren't free — they're deeply discounted thanks to a private land donation and help from Metro Nashville and affordable housing agencies.

One of these new homeowners is 57-year-old Diana Burke, a graduate of Thistle Farms' two-year recovery program who struggled with a criminal record that includes gun charges, drug charges and prostitution. Like many of her program peers, Burke's charges were tied to a longtime drug addiction and trafficking, a cycle she couldn't shake by herself.

"Have you ever fantasized about things you always wished for but never happened? This is something I never thought in my wildest imagination was possible," said Burke, who graduated from the in-patient recovery program a year ago.

"I'm an ex-felon, an ex-prostitute, and I was completely unemployable. I was bankrupt inside," she said. "It’s a kind of being reborn. I got a whole new life from the ground up."

Burke is now a Thistle Farms employee.

"This house means freedom, it means independence, it means having something of my own and something I can be proud of," she said.

A criminal record makes it difficult, often impossible, for ex-convicts to be able to rent housing, let alone buy homes. For years, Thistle Farms has provided housing assistance to help participants find places to rent.

But a donor's gift of three adjoining parcels of land in North Nashville allowed the charity, for the first time ever, to build homes for participants to buy, Thistle Farms administrators said.

Those homes won't be free for recipients. Thistle Farms is using a Habitat for Humanity-type model where homeowners will have a mortgage, though it'll be below market value. That happens because Thistle Farms has partnered with city and state agencies to build the homes and cover about half the mortgage.

Burke, for instance, will own a 1,200-square-foot, $400,000 home, but her mortgage will only be around $1,400 a month. Nashville's Barnes Housing Trust Fund and the nonprofit Affordable Housing Resources will cover the rest. If Burke sells the home, she is required to pay back the government agencies.

When she got the email saying she'd be chosen to receive one of the homes, Burke was in her office at the Thistle Farms manufacturing facility that makes soaps, lotions and other products the organization sells to support its recovery programs.

"I sat in my office a minute, and I read it, and I read it again," she said, tearing up. "Then I printed it out and showed it" a coworker/friend who'd already found out she was getting one of the other houses.

"There was a lot of excitement," Burke said, smiling, "and a little bit of fear."

Thistle Farm executives are not sure yet whether they will continue to build homes for graduates.

"We intend to learn from this process and work toward meaningful housing solutions for survivors in the future, whether that's through new home projects like this or other ways to address the affordable housing need," said Amanda Clelland, director of Thistle Farms' communications and advocacy.

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Thistle Farms adds home ownership to recovery plan for three women