A house fire in September 2017 left Tina Breen and her family displaced from their Manville, New Jersey home. “Luckily we didn’t lose our sentimental things, but we lost our garage, some of the attic, and the whole house had smoke damage,” she recounts with a heaviness. “It wasn’t safe to live in our home. We had to move out, so everything could be professionally cleaned, packed into storage containers, and then the damage repaired.”
While Tina says her insurance company took “really good care of them” during this stressful time, they had difficulty finding temporary housing for the family of seven – Tina and her husband Tommy, their three young daughters, two dogs, and a cat. They felt living in a hotel room wasn’t an option for their large family, so Tina and the girls moved in with her parents, and Tommy and the pets stayed with a family friend.
The disjointed living arrangement proved difficult as Tina and Tommy, New Jersey natives who have been married for 11 years, balanced work, parenthood, and putting their home back together. “A friend gave me great advice at the time, ‘You really need to get your family under the same roof, so you can be a family unit again,’” she says.
So one morning when they were at the house sorting through personal belongings, Tina took matters into her own hands. “I said to Tommy, ‘we’re getting into the car, and we’re going to drive until we find somewhere to live,’” she says. Tina admits she wasn’t sure where they were going, but she heard about some new construction in neighboring Somerset, so they started in that direction.
The Breens never heard of AVE Somerset before driving by the flexible-stay residential community on Pierce Street that day. “I remember when I first walked into the lobby. I was a mess. Since I’d been at the house, my clothes and hair smelled like smoke. I wasn’t wearing any makeup,” Tina says.
Operations Manager Amanda Hauffe and Senior Residential Sales Manager Brooke Tropeano were working that day. They greeted the Breens and guided them to the café. “I had a hundred things racing through my head. When you’re a parent and you don’t have a home, and you can’t provide the necessity of a roof over your family’s head – you’re just so overwhelmed. I started to cry,” she explains, her voice quivering. “I remember Amanda reacting immediately, ‘Oh my gosh, Tina, what’s wrong?’”
Tina told Amanda about the fire, their current disjointed living situation, and how stressed she was. Through her tears she told Amanda how this was the first time in her life she didn’t have a home. “Amanda looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Tina, don’t cry. This is your home now. We got you, girl!’, and all my stress was lifted,” she shares, her voice still shaky. “I could tell Amanda was a confident woman in business, and I knew she was going to handle it. I trusted her in that 5 minutes of knowing her. It was a combination of how she carried herself, how she spoke, and how meticulously maintained the lobby, café, and bathrooms were.”
