A place they can call home

Home

Crime News

Osceola County

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

A place they can call home

County News

Friday, 19 November 2010 21:14

Neighborhood program has its first tenants
By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer
Elaine and Archibald Naidu hung family photographs on the walls, placed special mementos on shelves and welcomed guests to their new home.
It was more than just a regular housewarming. The Naidus, both 81 years old, are the first tenants to move into a home purchased through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, or NSP, a partnership that includes the Osceola County Council on Aging, the city of Kissimmee and Florida S.P.E.C.S., a for-profit organization.
“I’ve already told 100 people (to apply). If people can become a part of (NSP), it will help the community,” Elaine Naidu said.
Naidu, who volunteers at the Kissimmee City Hall information desk, saw pamphlets advertising NSP and applied. She and her husband of 56 years were the first applicants to apply to the program and within six months, they had moved into the house at Parsons Pond in Kissimmee.
NSP was formed to provide relief for communities hit hard by the foreclosure crisis and provide affordable housing for qualifying seniors, veterans and special needs families.
According to Wendy Ford, housing manager for the Council on Aging, Kissimmee has plans to donate nine homes to the Counci, all two- or three bedroom houses, with $2.4 million in federal stimulus money, $1 million of which went toward rental properties. The homes must be located in the 34744 and 34743 ZIP codes: six homes are in Lakeside and three are in Mill Run, both Kissimmee neighborhoods.
Grant money from the federal government allows the council to purchase homes that otherwise would sit vacant, possibly becoming eyesores to the neighborhood, attracting vandals and criminal activity and decreasing surrounding property values.
Vacancies are available on a first-come, first-serve basis and currently 30 families are on the waiting list. Applicants must meet specific criteria, including not exceeding certain income limits. More information on the criteria is available at www.OsceolaGenerations.org
“I don’t expect this (program) to have the same amount of turnover (as the council’s apartment-style low-income housing),” Ford said. “They really have vested value in it. This is their home.”
Additionally, while the rent on these homes is at a reduced level, in order to move in, tenants are required to pay one month’s rent as security and sign a lease.
Each home goes through a renovation process, including at least one bathroom made to be handicap accessible, with a larger doorway and railings.
The Naidu’s home also received new tile and new kitchen appliances. Elaine Naidu, an accomplished gardener, said she plans to transform part of the backyard into a garden.
“When we’re in our new home, we feel relaxed, quiet, peaceful,” Archibald Naidu said. “This is truly our home now, where we’ll live out our days.”
“This is a blessing that has come to us,” Elaine Naidu said from her new living room. “It feels great to have our own home. We’re quite comfortable.”
The Naidus had a long journey coming to this point. For 10 years, they lived with their daughter, Margot Naidu, in a “family home” in Kissimmee to be close with their grandchildren and daughter.
After the housing crisis, their daughter’s home was foreclosed on and the family moved to three different residences in a year.
Archibald, a retired shipping clerk who worked as a crossing guard in Osceola County for 11 years and volunteers at the Cypress Elementary School reading program, and Elaine, a retired pediatric nurse, moved to Kissimmee in 1997. Originally from Guyana, they had lived in New York after moving there in 1982.
“This has come full circle. These are people who give back to the community and now the community is giving back to them,” Ford said.