(upbeat music) - I'm Starla Sampaco in the Crosscut, KCTS 9 Newsroom.

Buying a house in Seattle has never been easy.

And this video from senior producer, Sarah Hoffman, one single mother of five finds a program that could make her dream of home ownership a reality.

- Seattle is like, named one of the most expensive places to live in now.

And I can see it.

I mean, everything is becoming expensive.

It makes people feel like Seattle doesn't love people who love Seattle.

When I first moved here, I had a two bedroom apartment for $650.

For $700,000, you can get a one bedroom shack that needs a whole new kitchen and floors and so much work that has to be put into it.

There are so many single parents like myself, who that's just not something that's in their future.

Thank you.

You did a wonderful job.

I tried getting preapproval with just my income by myself.

They're like no, you can afford a house at $200,000, which of course, is not gonna get you anything, especially for the size of my family.

'Cause I have the five kids.

And even though we made it work in the two bedroom, it's just not enough space.

I had to just find what was affordable and what was affordable was in the deepness of Maple Valley.

So my kids went to school here in Seattle, which took them about two and a half hours to get to school every day.

So we made sacrifices to try and make it work.

- Here you go, mom, your daughter.

- You wanna help me?

Will cook your dinner I came across Habitat for Humanity and I came across Homestead Community Land Trust.

And I got excited because they had these programs that were geared towards affordable housing and people who had jobs like mine and police officers, social workers, bus drivers, whatever, that didn't meet like that tech criteria of making six figures.

And so I got really excited and then we were able to close on this five bedroom house.

So go from a two bedroom to a five bedroom that's way closer to my job.

The feeling of just signing those papers and getting those keys was like, (sighs) you know?

I felt like I just gave my kids something that people want to be able to give but don't think it's possible.

I gave them something that's actually going to benefit their life and change their life.

It's giving them generational wealth.

It has just given us a sense of security.

We have this, this is ours.

No one can take it from us.

We have a place that we can now call home.

- I'm Starla Sampaco.

For more in the housing market, visit Making Seattle Home on crosscut.com.