Mercedes Pickett is a West Side girl through and through — so much so that her dog is named Westside. She grew up in Garfield Park, with seven siblings in a home her mom bought. When it came time for Mercedes to decide where to buy her own home, there was no question that she would stay in her community.
“I didn’t want to walk away from such a beautiful place,” she said. “I see the Garfield Park area and the West Side as a gold mine. I just feel more like a stakeholder and an investor in my neighborhood. So, I can work here, I can play here, and I can pray here, because I actually live here.”
Pickett’s homeownership journey began long before it came time to find a realtor and visit properties. When she was growing up, she remembers how exciting it was to see her art hung up on the wall of her bedroom.
“With space comes opportunity,” she said. “To see the freedom a person has when they own the building is something that excited me.”
She saw her mom care for the property and handle the financials associated with homeownership — a road that can easily become rocky, given the unforgiving nature of many loans.
In 2008, Pickett’s mom fell two months behind on her mortgage payment and quickly began to fear foreclosure on her home. With the help of a grant from Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, her mom got back on track. She paid off the mortgage in 2017.
Pickett credits NHS with saving her childhood home — and inspiring her own home buying process.
“When NHS wants me to advocate for them, I do it in a heartbeat because they saved my family home and that impacted the trajectory of my life,” she said. “[NHS] understood that my mother can make ends meet, she just got a little bit behind. NHS gave her a lifeline. So many individuals and banks turned her down because they saw profit behind her missed payment.”
When Pickett decided to pursue homeownership for herself, she took NHS’s eight-hour homebuyer education course. Then, she worked with a financial counselor to build up her credit and completed a property management course, through which she learned some of the ins and outs of becoming a landlady and offering affordable housing.
When she started looking at homes, she knew she wanted a multi-unit property with a basement and an adjacent vacant lot. She said she experienced a smooth closing process. Pickett moved into her home in 2020.
She now lives on the second floor of her property. A mother-daughter tenant duo live downstairs.
About the home:
I have my own office, and that is one of my beautiful spaces where I can create, I can take meetings. It’s all designated to my needs … If your space is not conducive to your needs, it’s going to be distracting.
I also have a beautiful walk-in closet. I worked so hard for this walk-in closet. I have a nice little jewelry chest. I love making clothes, so I have a station for clothes that need repair, clothes I have ideas for. I love thrift store shopping too, so I can go to a thrift store, and then have a new relic or new artifact that can fit perfectly into my room, whether it’s a telescope or some Buddha hands or statues. I can have a Chinese [style] privacy divider in a window.
In my bedroom, I put up a big whiteboard, and I write my ideas down. I love writing on pencil and paper but sometimes when you’re in bed, you don’t have that. So, I can just go to my wall and write, and I put “Make the most of your potential” in really big, beautiful colors. It’s really about me having ideas in my own head and my own heart, and bringing them to life.
I was able to get a beautiful, all-black German Shepherd named Westside, and I got the gate for him.
I’m walking into each room just reflecting on the space that I have and how grateful I am. I step into a room and it’s not like the thought that I had when I was a kid of, “Oh, this room will be filled with plants and this room will be filled with meditation,” but each room does serve its own purpose.
I really walk around and even now I’m very appreciative that I have the space.
Advice for prospective homebuyers:
Take your time and have thorough inspections. Budget for inspections. I think that’s an asset for any first time homeowner. That one time, it could be perfect, but if you have a month before closing, there could be some additional things that were changed — you need someone to go in and inspect those things. Everyone has their own specialty. You want someone for your furnace, for your boiler and for your roof. Those three things are top priority. Make sure you have someone look specifically at your furnace, inspect the furnace, the life expectancy of it, and when it was purchased. [I want to] make sure that others understand the importance of inspections and the importance of saving or allocating funds for at least two inspections.
