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Highlands Today

Habitat's Ridgeview Townhouse Project Goes For Rezoning

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By JIM KONKOLY

Highlands Today

Published: October 6, 2008

SEBRING - Plans for Habitat for Humanity of Highlands County to build 100 two-story townhouses for workforce housing will go before the county's Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday.

Along with discussing the zoning and land-use issues for Ridgeview, Habitat for Humanity's biggest project in this county by far, Michael Jacobson, executive director of the local Habitat chapter, also will be speaking about the humanity behind the facts and figures.

"This is a real opportunity to de-mystify who Habitat families really are," he said.

"All so often," he said, "our families and so many like them are perceived as numbers, as in making less than this amount or not to exceed that amount" (to qualify)."

Jacobson pulled out a list of families on Habitat's waiting list and began reading their occupations.

"We have a pre-school teacher," he said. "And people working for the Highlands County Road and Bridge Department.

He then found several people working on the dietary staffs at assisted-living facilities and the high schools.

"And we have elder-care providers at a wide range of facilities," he said.

"In a county that was recently named the oldest county (by population) in the state of Florida and the second oldest county in the United States," he asked, "how important is it to provide safe, decent, affordable housing to those all-important workers who are providing care and services to our aging population?"

Jacobson continued and found workers on the Habitat waiting list who are dispatchers at the Highlands County Sheriff's Office.

"How important are the people who dispatch our emergency vehicles?" he asked.

"We also have phlebotomist's assistants, the people who draw your blood. We have an X-ray technician. And a surgery scheduler, who makes sure you're in the right operating room at the right time."

Also on the waiting list is an infant-toddler teacher at Redland Christian Migrant Association, and managers or assistant managers at several well known stores along U.S. 27 in Sebring.

Jacobson also found cooks and chefs working not only in restaurants but also in hospitals and assisted-living facilities.

"Could you imagine," he added, "what our community would be like if we didn't have people to do these jobs?"

Monthly payments for a two-story townhouse at Ridgeview, off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard just south of Arbuckle Creek Road, will be about $475 per month. That includes the mortgage note, taxes and insurance, Jacobson said.

The average person on Habitat's waiting list is paying $750 per month for rent, he said.

"We have families in our program performing vital jobs in our community, living in substandard conditions, over crowded conditions, or in financially crippling conditions," he said.

Getting a new townhouse at $475 per month, replacing a rent payment of $750 per month, will give people desperately needed cash to both buy products that stimulate the local economy and also put into a savings account.

"If we don't find ways to reduce the cost of acquiring a home, and of maintaining that home, then having a home becomes a burden on the family," he said. "It's that simple, it's about families.

About 130 families in Highlands County are in Habitat homes.

Seventy-five families are on the non-profit organization's priority waiting list, meaning they are in line to purchase a Habitat home when a project gets underway.

Another 150 families are on a secondary waiting list, waiting to move up to the first priority waiting list, Jacobson said.

About the total of 225 families on the combined waiting lists, he said, "there is no question that the need is probably two or three times that right now in this county."

Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com

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