‘Eternally grateful’: Beaches Habitat gives single mother of 10-year-old son path to homeownership

After years of commuting from Orange Park and struggling with housing costs, Andrea Donbach is helping build a townhome where she and her 10-year-old son can put down roots.With the average Northeast Florida home priced at about $399,000 and 30-year mortgage rates near 7%, homeownership can feel out of reach for many working families.RELATED: Dream of homeownership coming true for single motherDonbach knows that challenge. She works full time at a veterinarian’s office in Jacksonville Beach, but for the previous seven years she has commuted from Orange Park because she couldn’t afford to live at the beach.Now, she’s helping build a home of her own in Coastal Haven, a Beaches Habitat for Humanity community.“I’ve been doing a lot of the framing and strapping,” Donbach said as she showed off the townhome she’s helping construct. “It’s been pretty amazing to be able to work on the actual structure itself.”Habitat homebuyers are required to contribute 300 hours of “sweat equity” as part of