City of Fort Pierce Minutes of a Regular Meeting

Regular Postponed Meeting February 22, 2011
Houses are falling apart literally. He wanted to bring
something to their attention tonight. He took this Department
over almost a year ago. As they have moved through some of
these issues, he wanted to make this Commission as aware of
those issues as he has become. For that purpose, he has brought
with him tonight a fairly large notebook. This is the waiting
list for housing rehabilitation work. Each one of these pages
represents a person and a house. These are not large
applications, these are the pre-application "I want to be in
line" forms. There are 364 requests for service in this book.
Many of these houses are in dire condition. Three folks in
particular have come to see him recently that have been referred
by Commissioners. One of those, his contractor went to see the
house, set foot inside the door, the house shook like a bowl of
jelly, and he was afraid it was going to fall down around him
while he was standing there - so it is obviously desperate.
There is a family who had a house fire and they are living in
one part of this burned-out shell. There is a third family
whose home is built on a raised foundation and the floor is so
rotten it is about to fall out from under the house like a wet
paper bag. So there are emergencies, folks that need help; but
he has 364 folks in front of them. It is an operational problem
and it is a political problem. It is an operational problem
because it costs between $75,000 and $100,000 to completely
rebuild a home. The City is required federally by statute...
When they go into a house, they can't just put a coat of paint
on it and leave, they have to bring it up to the Section 8
codes, federally mandated. So if they go in there to fix a
leaking faucet and they see electrical problems or a roof leak
or mold, they are mandated to fix those things; so once they are
in it, they are in for a penney, in for a pound, in the truest
sense of the word. His funding tells him he has enough to fix
three houses. That means, of the 364 folks that are sitting
here already in line - and this goes back to 2006 - if 2/3rds of
them fall out for whatever reason, if the folks have passed on
or the house fell down or whatever happened, if 2/3rds of these
things go away, he will be able to address the folks on the
waiting list in the next 30 to 50 years, the way the funding is
going. So he is telling them, he has an operational problem.
The political problem is, he is going to have to start telling
folks that he can't help them. When they come to him, they are
standing there at the front desk and telling him about their
mama who lives in a house that is falling down... He has a
young gentleman that is calling him three times a week and
asking when is he going to go out and do something about it.
The problem is, he cannot statutorily jump over the 364 folks in
front of her to go address that issue. Because if he does, they
other folks will feel they have been unfairly treated and
obviously they have been because they have been waiting for all
this time. They all want to know when he is going to get around
to them too. Then he thought maybe he would have his
contractors, these professionals who are working with him, all
go out there and identify absolutely horrible fixing to fall
down structures with real problems. He can't do that, because
it might be the 7th, the 12th, or the 22nd on the list, and he
would be jumping over people to do that. So he has a problem
and he is not real sure what to do about it.
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City of Fort Pierce Minutes of a Regular Meeting held on February 22, 2011
Copyright © 2011 City of Fort Pierce Florida