Oxford, Mississippi’s first Millard Fuller Legacy Build powered by love and faith

OXFORD, Mississippi — When Oxford-Lafayette Fuller Center President Clint Williford handed Bria Brown the keys to her new home in the Brittany Woods neighborhood on Saturday in the blazing Mississippi sunshine, it was the culmination of an intense month of building.

Honoring the legacy of the late founder of The Fuller Center for Housing (and Habitat for Humanity), the first-ever Millard Fuller Legacy Build in this quintessential Southern college town got off to a huge jump-start when volunteers from across the nation came to town during the first week of construction. In just a few days, a framed-and-roofed home rose from an empty slab of concrete.

And Bria, a communications officer with the University of Mississippi Police Department, was there from the beginning — along with others from the local community who set out to deliver an affordable, energy-efficient home for a deserving partner.

“She worked hard,” Oxford-Lafayette Fuller Center President Clint Williford said. “The blitz build people were very impressed with her. Whatever they asked her to do, she got right in there with her hands and did it. There is sweat equity in this house.”

Bria will now be just a few minutes from her job after having spent years commuting from her grandparents’ home 30 minutes away in Holly Springs, and her daughter Zion will be able to attend schools in a city synonymous with education. Not only did Bria put in her share of sweat equity, but she will now pay it forward with joy. She will repay the costs of the home with a zero-percent-interest mortgage with those repayments staying in the local community so that others may receive the same kind of hand-up.