Page 4 - Florida Sentinel 5-13-16 Online Edition

Features
Family Loses Everything
Eastern Heights Neighborhood Association And Crime Watch
In Mother’s Day Fire
The Eastern Heights Neighborhood Association and Crime Watch will be holding their monthly meet- ing on May 19th, 6:30 p.m., at Williams Park, 4363 East Os- borne Avenue.
The guest speaker will be Marlin Anderson, Scien- tology Volunteer Minister, and he will be speaking on the
topic, “Protecting Your Children From Vio- lence.”
Marlin Anderson is a Volunteer Minister with the Church of Scientology of Tampa and has been working for more than 4 years to help bring peace and harmony to East Tampa through educa- tional programs in morals,
harmful drugs, and human rights.
Everyone is encouraged to attend this meeting and re- freshments will be served.
For more information, con- tact Mr. Samuel L. Mob- ley, Sr., President of the Eastern Heights Neighbor- hood Association and Crime Watch, at (813) 628-4243.
Ms. Dorothy Langston, seated in the wheelchair, is sur- rounded by family members.
County’s Affordable Housing Needs Boost
Ms. Dorothy Langston
found a nice, two-story home for her and her family 7 years ago at 3303 Sanchez Street, and since occupying the home, they all had grown comfortable.
On Mother’s Day, that comfort was disrupted when at 2:45 p.m., a small child came running to Ms. Langston saying a sofa that was in a family room in the rear of the house was on fire.
Ms. Langston said they had just gotten home from church, and had sat down to eat dinner when the child alerted her about the fire.
“We tried getting the sofa out of the house, but we couldn’t. So the next best thing was for us to get out of the house.
“The entire rear section of
the house, including the up- stairs, was destroyed, and the house overall is uninhabit- able.”
Ms. Langston lived in the house with her daughter and four children she was taking care of. Also living in the house was her granddaughter and her two children.
“There was a total of 9 of us living in the house. Red Cross helped us out until I had to move in with my son.
“We lost everything in the fire, and it’s been tough find- ing another place big enough for all of us. Our most urgent need right now is for medica- tion. Some of it was mine, and one of them needs a nebu- lizer.”
Anyone who can offer any assistance to this family can call (813) 368-7935.
BY LEON B. CREWS Sentinel Staff Writer
A group from the Hillsbor- ough Organization for Progress and Equality (HOPE) made a presentation to the Board of County Com- missioners a week ago to give them insight into the state of Affordable Housing in Hills- borough County.
After the presentation, Commissioners had a lengthy discussion and Commis- sioner Victor Crist sug- gested they get with county staff and County Administra- tor Mike Merrill, to review recommendations on how to deal with the issue of Afford- able Housing in the county.
County officials agree that there is not enough housing that’s available and affordable for workers with low wages. According to statistics, Hills- borough County has 74,000 families with very low in- comes and also pay more than 50% of their income for hous-
COMMISSIONER VICTOR CRIST
ing.
Comm. Crist asked his
colleagues to agree on allocat- ing $10 million to assist with the issue of Affordable Hous- ing. He had to justify the re- quest and his colleagues said it’s true that something needs to be done, but the issue of transportation takes top pri- ority.
“I also think we’d save a lot of money by using the staff we employ instead of consultants to deal with this issue.
“I understand that trans- portation is a priority for us
right now, but we can’t just sit back and pretend this will fix itself.”
All of the Commissioners agreed that an availability study needs to be completed so a proper assessment can be made of what’s available in the county when it comes to affordable housing.
According to a study, the fair market rent for a 2-bed- room apartment is $951 a month. To afford this, a worker must earn $19-per- hour, and work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. A min- imum wage worker must work 98 hours a week, all 52 weeks of the year, or the fam- ily needs at least 2-1/2 mini- mum wage workers, working 40 hours every week of the year.
Also, there are only 78 units both available and af- fordable, for every 100 fami- lies with very low incomes, and only 27 units for every 100 families with extremely low incomes.
PAGE 4-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2016