November 30, 2015 | Pensacola News Journal
Carlos Gieseken
When the floods from the April 2014 storm receded, Joan LaVoie’s 900-square-foot home on John Carroll Drive, near Pensacola International Airport, was left with extensive damage.
LaVoie, 61, and her husband, Robert, 65, then gutted the two-bedroom, one-bath house down to the brick walls. The two-by-fours, Sheetrock and floors all had to be ripped out and the plumbing had to be repaired.
United Way referred the couple to the State Housing Initiatives Partnership, or SHIP, which is administered through the county. It approved a $15,000 emergency-repairs grant for building materials.
“It was a lifeline being thrown out to us,” LaVoie said, adding that frugal materials shopping allowed the couple to return $7,500 so that someone else could receive help. “It was like somebody threw out a liferaft.”
The SHIP program funds downpayment assistance, emergency repairs, accessibility renovation and other affordable housing programs throughout the state. It receives funding from excise taxes on deeds, bonds, mortgages and similar documents.
The housing trust fund is projected to have $324 million next year. Local and state advocates want the state legislature to appropriate the full amount to affordable housing programs during the 2016 session.
Last year, $81 million of the $256 million total trust fund was appropriated into general revenue.
“In the great recession, when the budget was in the tank, we understood that all trust funds were going to have to kick in money,” said Mark Hendrickson, a member of the executive committee of the Florida Housing Coalition. “We think full funding should be utilized for affordable housing in years like this year and last year.”
The wait list in Escambia County for roof repairs and electrical systems upgrades for various ADA accessibility retrofits for the elderly or disabled is more than 100. The home buyer wait list is about 40, said Randy Wilkerson, director of multifamily housing at the Escambia County Housing Finance Authority.
“Home repair funding is historically gone to elderly and disabled folks,” said Wilkerson. “These folks don’t have the wherewithal to make ADA renovations.”
Hendrickson said the funds have a positive return on investment through the savings on other state expenditures.
“It’s way cheaper to the state of Florida to help grandma fix her roof and put in a wheelchair ramp than put her into a facility that the state has to subsidize at a greater cost per year,” he said.
The SHIP funds will allow LaVoie and her family to continue to make memories in the home she grew up in and that she inherited when her mother died in 2013.
“I have memories of climbing all these trees and riding my bike,” she said. “Back then it was just all woods. It was cow pastures and property.”
She and her husband lived in a rented apartment for a year while the home was renovated. The couple are grateful for the volunteers who donated labor and for the SHIP program’s financial help.
“It allowed me to move back in and allowed my husband and I to start rebuilding our life,” she said.
Article last accessed here on December 1, 2015.