SOUTH BEND — Katie Robbins, with a small child in her arms, steps over toys and around open moving boxes as she leads a visitor through her new home on Fuerbringer Street.
Robbins, a single mother of four who works part time at Purple Porch Co-op in downtown South Bend, moved into the four-bedroom house shortly after the new year, and she’s still in the process of unpacking.
It’s an upgrade from the two-bedroom home where she had been living on the south side, off Miami Street,before parting ways with the father of her four children and facing “lots of financial debt.”
Showing off the kitchen — her two oldest daughters playing in a makeshift fort in the living room, and her young son napping upstairs— she points to one particular feature that sets the new place apart.
“I’m most excited about the dishwasher,” she says. “As a single working parent of four children, that’s seriously revolutionized my life. I spend so much less time doing dishes.”
Of course, the extra space is nice, too.
“We moved from a little two-bedroom house on the south side. It was two bedroom, one bathroom, and I’ve got four children, so it was tight quarters for us,” she says.
Robbins is among the first wave of 10 residents to move into South Bend Mutual Homes, a new cooperative housing development on the city’s near west side, off Lincoln Way West.
Developed by Neighborhood Development Associates in partnership with South Bend Heritage Foundation, the project consists of 24 detached single-family homes on an equal number of formerly vacant lots.