FLAGLER COUNTY / HOUSING & PUBLIC SERVICE / INSPIRATION
Devrie
Paradowski
What the keys
can change.
By Rob Urban
Before Devrie Paradowski became executive director of Flagler Habitat for Humanity, she was one of its homeowners.
That fact gives her career an unusual shape. The person responsible for helping an organization move forward has also filled out the application, waited through the process and built a life around the opportunity it provided. Her understanding of housing includes both the administrative vocabulary and the feeling of finally having somewhere dependable to come home to.
In a September 2026 profile by the Palm Coast Observer, Paradowski described working for an anti-poverty organization while struggling financially herself. A colleague encouraged her to apply to Habitat. She and her daughter moved into their home in 2009; in April 2026, after years in public service, she took on the executive director’s role.
Her own writing deserves attention alongside that remarkable change of role. Paradowski thinks about the systems surrounding a home, the assumptions people make about its occupants, and what a stable place allows a person to attempt next.
A home holds
more than one truth.
In a 2026 essay about mobile homes, Paradowski recalled the house her parents bought when she was ten. Her father worked in framing; her mother was a hairdresser. To a child, the new double-wide was an extraordinary place, particularly a bedroom reached through a door that looked as though it belonged to a closet.
Years later, the same home sheltered her as a single mother returning from Navy service. It also carried the accumulated strain of aging materials, repair needs and Florida storms. Eventually it had to be replaced.
Her essay holds the affection and the difficulty together. She remembers what the home made possible while asking what long-term maintenance and secure land ownership mean for affordability. A low initial price cannot answer every question about what a household will face over time.
That is a more useful way to discuss a home than treating it as a symbol with only one meaning. The place can be beloved and vulnerable. A family can feel fortunate to have it while worrying about the next repair. Affordability is experienced across years, often in bills that arrive one at a time.
Paradowski’s account also resists the distance that can creep into housing discussions. It is easy to talk about a category of buildings as though nobody remembers a graduation party in one of them. Her writing puts those memories back into the room without allowing them to settle the policy question by themselves.
Information
someone can use.
Paradowski served in the Navy from 1999 to 2006 as an aerographer’s mate, working in meteorological observations and aviation forecasting. A biographical account by Flagler County’s veterans services officer traces her assignments from training in Mississippi to Naval Air Station Oceana and then Keflavik, Iceland.
In Iceland, she supervised a small watch team providing weather information to aviators and rescue operations. She also helped service members and families navigate financial and housing matters as a command financial specialist. Along the way, she volunteered in elementary schools, including teaching children about weather.
The combination is striking: technical information, public explanation and practical assistance. These are different forms of responsibility, but each involves making something complicated usable to another person.
After military service, she used veterans benefits to continue her education, earning several degrees, including a master’s in public administration. Her later work in Flagler County housing put those skills into a local setting.
A forecast is useful because someone must act on it. The same is true of an explanation of a housing program. Accuracy matters, but so does whether the person receiving the information can understand the next step. Paradowski’s career has repeatedly placed her near that point of translation.
Open until five.
At work until five.
One of her most revealing pieces of writing concerns something other than a house. In a 2025 essay about libraries, she described the limits of a library whose opening hours overlapped with her working day. The resource existed; her ability to use it was another matter.
She also recalled a couple using library access to pursue education and considered the value of bringing public resources closer together. Her argument came from noticing how a service fits into an actual schedule, including when it does not.
That is the kind of observation I wish appeared more often in organizational planning. A facility can look perfectly adequate on a map while being almost unavailable to the person it is supposed to serve. Distance, transportation, hours and paperwork all have a vote.
Paradowski can describe those obstacles from more than one position. She has worked within institutions and needed what institutions provide.
Her writing does not suggest that personal experience supplies every answer. It supplies questions that might otherwise go unasked. Can someone use this service after work? What happens when the repair becomes unaffordable? Does the next step require resources the applicant does not yet have?
The work needs
somewhere to stand.
In an essay on government and nonprofit partnerships, Paradowski argues for clear public accountability alongside recognition of the relationships and local knowledge nonprofit organizations possess. She is attentive to the costs of reporting, staffing and maintaining the systems that service providers need.
That is a practical argument from someone who knows that an organization cannot live indefinitely on admiration. People need time to do the work, and the work needs support that includes its less visible components.
Her writing on the wider effects of housing programs likewise asks readers to consider consequences beyond an individual success story. She points to the connections among housing, local employment, contractors and community stability. These are her arguments about how programs should be understood, and they help explain the perspective she brings to leadership.
She also objects to stories that give all the action to the organization doing the helping. A person was already trying, working, caring for a family, making decisions. Assistance enters a life in motion. That point should influence the way we tell her own story. Habitat was important to Paradowski’s future. So were her service, her studies and the work she continued to do.
I admire that insistence on giving people credit for their own lives. A home can help someone become an executive director. It can also help someone raise children with fewer disruptions, stay near friends or plan an ordinary week. Those lives do not owe us a spectacular ending to make the opportunity worthwhile.
Back through
the same door.
At Flagler Habitat, the work becomes physical: homes, volunteers, materials, financing and families preparing for ownership. The organization relies on many people, and Paradowski now helps coordinate their contributions from a position she once could scarcely have imagined holding.
The same Observer profile includes Lindsay Elliott, the former Flagler Habitat director who knew Paradowski when she applied. Their stories meet at an application and continue through years of community work. That is a meaningful kind of return: experience comes back into the organization and changes who is there to explain the next step.
A few notes
played with care.
There is one final detail I keep returning to. In Perfect Prelude, a short reflection on learning piano, she remembers wanting to move on to more difficult music before fully appreciating the simpler pieces. Looking back, she saw value in doing the work at hand with greater care and expression.
It is a modest admission, and a good one. Ambition does not always mean reaching for the next grand thing. Sometimes it means understanding the thing already in front of you well enough to do it properly.
For Paradowski, that thing has often been somebody’s home. She knows how much can begin once the door opens.
About Devrie Paradowski
Who is Devrie Paradowski?
Devrie Paradowski is a Navy veteran and public-service professional who became executive director of Flagler Habitat for Humanity in April 2026. She is also a former Flagler Habitat homeowner.
When did Devrie Paradowski become a Habitat homeowner?
According to the Palm Coast Observer’s September 2026 profile, Paradowski and her daughter moved into their Habitat home in 2009.
What does Devrie Paradowski write about?
Her published essays explore housing, public resources, nonprofit partnerships and the practical conditions that allow people to use opportunities. She has also written about what learning piano taught her about doing the work at hand with care.
Sources: Paradowski’s published essays, the Palm Coast Observer’s September 2026 profile and the Flagler County veterans services officer’s account of her military service. Reviewed September 2026. Reflections are Rob Urban’s.
I care about telling stories that leave people’s dignity intact. If you would like to read more of my work or talk about telling yours, meet Rob.