South Sarasota County affordable housing home program moves in second family

VENICE – A single father with joint custody of three sons, Derek Wilson, did the best he could to keep his family under the roof of a three-bedroom home off of Fruitville Road, even as the landlord increased his rent to $1,750 a month.

Earlier: Family Promise of South Sarasota County receives $25,100 donation

But when Wilson, a business solutions advisor for ADT, received notice that his landlord did not want to renew his lease, he could not find anywhere else within his means.

But on Saturday afternoon, Wilson started a move into one of 10 cottages in Venice owned by Family Promise of South Sarasota County and used for the nonprofit’s Pathways Home program.

“I’ve been very fortunate and blessed to be a part of this ‘cause I honestly don’t know what I would have done without it,” said Wilson, 34, who later added that he was in tears when he learned he qualified for Pathways Home.

“I just didn’t expect to get this type of help,” he said. “I had been a self-made man, doing my own thing most of my life.

“Family’s there when they can be; that being said, I’m also the kind of a guy who doesn’t ask for help because I think I can do it on my own.”

For the next year the Pathways Home cottage means a safe home base and a stable environment for his three children – 8-year-old twins Koan Rush and Jason Sage, and 6-year-old Kado Link.

Wilson's experience underscores the far-reaching impacts the Sarasota-Bradenton region's lack of affordable housing has on individual and family lives and its ripple effect on the fabric of life and overall economy.

The three children will occupy a triple bunk bed in the first-floor bedroom, while he will sleep in the second-floor bedroom.

“It’s going to be able to accommodate my family,” he added. “I’ll be able to get them settled in and get things back to where it needs to be.”

Prior to Wilson's scramble for stable housing, the children had been enrolled in Oak Park Elementary School, since all three are special needs children.

More recently, they’ve been staying with their mother in Manatee County and attending school there.

Family Promise is already working with the Sarasota County School District to move the children back to their original school.

A start for Pathways Home

Wilson and his children are the second family to move into Family Promise of South Sarasota County’s Pathways Home program since the nonprofit closed on the $2.5 million purchase of the 10 cottages at the end of January.

Jennifer Fagenbaum, executive director of Family Promise of South Sarasota County, said a third family could move in later this week.

Supply chain issues – notably a shortage of basic items like window blinds – have slowed things down. Only three of 10 sets of blinds have arrived; the rest are on backorder.

Some of those have come in damaged – including one of the sets earmarked for Wilson’s home. His mother and grandmother are both expert seamstresses, while the mother of his best friend, Victor Kaminskiy, owns North Port Alterations, so he’s hoping for an assist in sewing curtains for the widows and the sliding glass door that leads to the side yard.

Related: Family Promise of South Sarasota County closes on purchase of cottages

In addition to cosmetic and privacy purposes, blinds and curtains help keep the homes cool and decrease the need for air conditioning and ideally lower the cost of electricity.

Fagenbaum also wants to make a good impression on the neighbors.

The Pathways Home project is a broadening of the mission of Family Promise of South Sarasota County, which provides shelter, meals and social services to families that need housing.

To learn more about the nonprofit and its programs, visit https://familypromisessc.org.

Fagenbaum also noted that is continuing efforts to find permanent homes for some potential Pathways Home families.

“We had one family last month that we were going to put in one of these, a house came open at Venetian Walk – which is permanently affordable,” Fagenbaum said. “So rather than put her here for a year and hope another spot came up there, we just put them in there.”

The mother of another potential family has a Section 8 voucher and recently found a landlord willing to assist.

“She found a landlord that would work with her – the house just has to pass the HUD inspection,” Fagenbaum said.

Those families are still part of nonprofit’s “Keeping the Promise,” aftercare program and work monthly with case managers, to make sure they are on the road to stability.

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The Pathways Home program, which is the first of its type hosted by a local nonprofit, provides participants with everything from financial counseling to education so they can qualify for higher-paying jobs.

Participants pay a program fee of $600 per month to rent a one-bedroom cottage or $800 a month for a two-bedroom cottage.

Those rates are set to allow families to build up savings, while working toward a stable future and eventually move into a market-rate home.

Last month, when the Sarasota County Commission approved spending $25 million in federal pandemic relief funds on fostering the development of affordable and workforce housing, that included $500,000 for Family Promise to purchase an existing three-bedroom home with a mother-in-law flat that is unofficially park of the Parkside Cottages complex.

Related: Sarasota County commits $25 million in federal funds to affordable housing

That existing home was on the 2.5-acre lot which was used by developer Mike Miller for the cottage complex.

Fagenbaum said that essentially means two more homes that can be used, with the three-bedroom home available as shelter for a larger family.

She still has a goal of staggering the move-in schedule, so eventually, three families will rotate out of Pathways Home and be able to live on their own each quarter.

The nonprofit hopes to purchase homes that can be rented out at less than market rate for permanent workforce housing but Fagenbaum said the nonprofit must retire the debt on Pathways Home first.

Family Promise could not use a conventional mortgage because of a requirement to charge tenants market-rate rents.

A private investor came through with a low-interest loan of up to $1.5 million, to allow the sale to close.

Family Promise has been making quarterly interest payments on the private loan, and is on track to make a $200,000 payment on the principal this month.

If two large pledges come in, the nonprofit could be halfway to retiring the debt this fall.

Otherwise, Fagenbaum figures it will take about two years to raise the money needed to own Parkside Cottages free and clear.

“To be fiscally responsible I can’t go start another project with this debt still here,” Fagenbaum said.

Hope for the future

Wilson worked for several years at Men’s Wearhouse, then sold health insurance for awhile prior to his job with ADT, and thought he was on track for home ownership befoe the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When I first started the job a little over two years ago, I was like, ‘I'm finally in a little bit better place financially, I feel like I should be able to apply for a home loan,’” Wilson said.

The banks told him they’d prefer at least two years of paperwork on commission sales job as part of a mortgage application.

Meanwhile, as his landlord raised the rent, Wilson did his best to hustle at work and make ends meet.

Wilson had about two months' notice that his lease would not be renewed. With landlords seeking tenants earning three times base rent, he couldn’t find anything.

“Two thousand a month rent, you have to make $67,000 a year, I wasn’t at that mark,” Wilson said. “I couldn’t provide that.”

Wilson found out about Pathways Home because ADT handles the security system for Family Promise of South Sarasota County, though at first he didn’t think his client would be a housing solution.

“When he came over here to look at these, his boss actually let me know that he was sleeping on a friend’s couch,” Fagenbaum said.

Fagenbaum noted that the nonprofit worked with Wilson for several other options – including a short-term hotel stay – before determining that Pathways Home was his best option.

“It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. It’s very fortunate that I was here,” Wilson said.

“It’s been a very humbling experience,” he added. “I have been able to focus on things I haven’t been able to before, forget about things that didn’t matter, maybe so much.

“I was able to focus on work and just get things done – focus on success and it shall come.”

Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected]. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Family Promise homeless intervention program moves in second family