{"id":22181,"date":"2020-07-30T15:52:56","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T22:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/habitatportlandmetro.org\/?p=22181"},"modified":"2024-11-19T16:26:27","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T00:26:27","slug":"an-extraordinary-life-colises-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/","title":{"rendered":"An Extraordinary Life: Colise&#8217;s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-22222 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/habitatportlandmetro.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Colise-Johnson-4-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Habitat Homeowner Colise smiles in her living room\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1921\" \/>Colise&#8217;s commitment to strengthening her community didn&#8217;t end when she signed the mortgage on a home she helped build from the ground up. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even before moving into the Madison South neighborhood of Northeast Portland in 2001, she gave back more than her fair share. She is an individual driven by a deep sense of compassion and integrity.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like all Habitat homebuyers, she put in hundreds of hours of \u201csweat equity\u201d helping to build her home. Despite being a person with a physical disability and having two young children at home, Colise insisted on doing more. A lot more. By the time her home was finished, Colise contributed over 1,735 hours on the build site\u2014all while in a wheelchair. What appeared to staff at the time as an extraordinary contribution was really just the beginning of her new life of breaking down barriers and nurturing her community.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cTell me I can\u2019t, you\u2019re gonna make me mad,\u201d she says spryly. \u201cMake me mad and you better stand back.\u201d This attitude describes seamlessly the grit that brought this young mother from near homelessness to homeownership in less than a year. From a decrepit rental in North Portland, she saved and worked on her credit while she went through the Habitat homebuyer program; attending financial preparedness classes and building her home from the ground up. Once she had the keys to her new wheelchair-accessible home, she kept the momentum of that mentality. That\u2019s why it came as no surprise that Colise paid her entire mortgage off in record time. She still remembers how long it took: 12 years, 1 month, and 17 days. An extraordinary achievement, no doubt.<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the same home, Colise, after having tackled her own poverty, began helping others. From her porch, she launched a social services organization called \u2018The Gap: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">God Always Provides.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019 As an unofficial neighborhood organizer, Colise turns donated food and clothes into gifts to people struggling to make ends meet. She made Christmas dinners, provided school supplies, clothes, hygiene kits, and household items. Of her time and dedication to helping others, she says modestly, \u201cCommunity is what it\u2019s all about.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Colise organizes a vital source of sustenance to those relying on her services. She says of her organization, \u201cIf you\u2019ve kept one person from going hungry at night, you\u2019ve accomplished something.\u201d When asked why she works so tirelessly in helping others, she responds, \u201cWithout Habitat helping me get this house, I would not be where we\u2019re at today, period. They gave to me when I needed it.\u201d Looking back, she thinks of her work in the community as a simple way of paying it forward\u2014an extraordinarily caring model that, when looking at all she\u2019s accomplished, fits her uniquely resilient, mold-breaking character.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colise has done more in one life than most dream of doing in several. Raising two children, building her own home, and providing food and clothing to countless neighbors \u2014all with her unrelenting compassion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":22222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homeowner-story","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An Extraordinary Life: Colise&#039;s Story - Habitat Portland Region<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Extraordinary Life: Colise&#039;s Story - Habitat Portland Region\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Colise has done more in one life than most dream of doing in several. Raising two children, building her own home, and providing food and clothing to countless neighbors \u2014all with her unrelenting compassion.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Habitat Portland Region\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/habitatportland\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-07-30T22:52:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-11-20T00:26:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Taryn Sauer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@habitatportland\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@habitatportland\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Taryn Sauer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Taryn Sauer\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/#\/schema\/person\/3ce34ce5cca02b9a31fea75a961c387a\"},\"headline\":\"An Extraordinary Life: Colise&#8217;s Story\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-07-30T22:52:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-11-20T00:26:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/\"},\"wordCount\":467,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"\",\"articleSection\":[\"Homeowner Story\",\"News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/habitatportlandregion.org\/an-extraordinary-life-colises-story\/\",\"name\":\"An Extraordinary Life: Colise's Story - 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