No house in the end

Home

Track and Field

No house in the end

Other Sun Publications

FREE DELIVERY!
Get Free Delivery! Request your Osceola News Gazette Today.

Login Form

2013 Osceola Health

2013 Sexual Predator Sexual Offender List sexualpredatorcover13

Windows on the Classroom March 2013

School Calendar
2012-2013

View our other Special Sections

No house in the end

County News

Friday, 21 May 2010 12:51

Brown

By Juliana A. Torres
Staff Writer

When Lee Brown, a 63-year-old father of seven and disabled Army veteran, pushed his walker over the threshold of a brand new house built by Habitat of Humanity of Osceola County with the time and financial support of the community last November, he thought he had found his happy ending.
It didn't turn out that way.
Brown never moved into the house at 680 Alma St. He was disqualified as a “partner family” with the service organization when his income-to-expenses ratio changed. “All that commotion and nothing. It was a good story for a big check,” Brown said of the dedication ceremony, which was attended by community leaders, including a former Washington Redskins quarterback. “The only thing I got out of it was the picture from the newspapers and the football Joe Theismann gave me.”
Though Habitat for Humanity celebrated the completion of the house and told the story of how Brown, who has been on oxygen due to a mold infestation in a previous home and has been disabled since 1991, raised his seven biological children as well as eight others, never closed on the house.
“It's an unfortunate situation,” Randy Bronson, Habitat for Humanity of Osceola County president, said. “He was told he can't make any changes in his income or he’d run the risk of being disqualified. He went out and bought a new car.”

HabitatFollowUp03_052010

News-Gazette Photo/Andrew Sullivan
Still with Habitat for Humanity signage in the yard and posted to windows, the home at 680 Alma St. in Kissimmee sits vacant, nearly 8 months after the Christian nonprofit organization announced it was awarding the newly-constructed home to Kissimmee resident Lee Brown, who was 63 at the time. Brown was later informed he would not be receiving the home because of personal debt.

In early December, the local Habitat for Humanity notified Brown that his change in expenses, specifically the $197 monthly car payment for the new Chrysler 300, changed his financial situation, which the organization had approved during the qualifying process. The organization agreed to work with him, but emphasized that the car payment had to go away.
“He couldn't afford the car and afford the mortgage payment too. He didn't want to do anything to change it,” Bronson said. “You have to have some responsibility; that's what we teach our families.”
The house Brown was to receive did not come free. Along with “sweat-equity hours” his family and church community helped him contribute to the house, Brown had to eventually pay for the house, though he was granted an interest-free loan in the process.
Brown said he couldn't find anyone to transfer the payments to and didn't want to allow the car to be repossessed, as that would ruin his credit. He received at letter later, announcing the bad news.
“Your refusal to comply with the options presented caused your termination as a partner family. This means you have been deselected as a partner family,” the letter from Habitat for Humanity read.
“They could have done something to get me in that house,” Brown said. “That's one of the things that kept me down.”
Later that month, on Dec. 16, Brown received even more horrible news. His youngest son, 27-year-old Secil Brown, was shot and killed in the street. Kissimmee police arrested a suspect, 20-year-old Bryan Hazley, who pleaded guilty in April to manslaughter and was sentenced to 25 years behind bars.
Still, one of the last pictures Brown has of his youngest son – who was to live with him, two other sons and his ex-wife in the new house – is a group shot from the celebration of the construction completion.
“I just don't think it was right,” his 31-year-old son Antwon Brown said. “The money was raised with my father's story. My brother, who is no longer with us, worked on it (the house). The whole thing is a shame.”
Aside from the loss of the house itself, Brown said he is upset about more than $1,500 worth of improvements he put into the house. Using mostly borrowed money – including $100 from his church – and credit cards, Brown had ceramic tile and vertical blinds installed. The tile, which would help his wheelchair accessibility, cost about $806 and the blinds were $741.
When he was disqualified as a partner family, he tried to get that money reimbursed, writing a letter to the organization on March 10. Habitat for Humanity said in a letter back that he had installed the tile and blinds before closing on the house, which was his choice and also his responsibility.
Bronson said families sometime request changes to the Habitat houses, but must pay for the modifications out of their own pockets.
“We have nothing in our laws and policies to give a refund like that, because that's a choice he made,” he said.
Brown has been in and out of the hospital for various ailments since late March, coming out of the hospital only recently. He's back living in a two-bedroom apartment, which isn't very handicap-accessible, with his son. He has to deal with the possibility of losing his Section 8 status, having missed an important letter earlier this moth while he was in the hospital, he said.
And, he's ticked off at the service organization that promised him a house.
“I want to do something about this. I don't want no one else to get hyped up,” Brown said. “Habitat is going to catch some hell, because you don't do God's children like that.”
The Alma Street house now sits vacant. Habitat for Humanity is facing a different challenge: the organization hasn't been able to pay $20,000 worth of impact fees to allow the house to be occupied.
“We're looking at other families to put them in there as soon as we can pay the impact fees,” Bronson said.
The donor base for the organization has decreased, executive director Pat Filippone said.
“He had every opportunity and we were wiling to work with him and he made his own choice," she said. "It put a delay on our funding because we had to select a new homeowner."
A hard-working deserving family will be selected for the new home and the organization will be looking to close very quickly, she said.
Meanwhile, the black Chrysler sits in front of Brown's rented apartment, with a front license plate that reads, “This is one of my many blessings from the Lord.”

COMMENTS_LIST_HEADER

-3 #1 jerrystr 2013-05-22 09:19

This poor man has served his country and needs help but the systems ignores him. If he were an illegal they would bend over backwards to help him. A case of being punished for being a good citizen. So many worthless individuals getting all kinds of assistance and this good man is locked out.

BUTTON_REFRESH

Please register
or log in to post comments.

JComments