TAMPA, Fla. — New Life Village in Tampa offers affordable housing and aims to keep kids out of foster care while helping families heal.
What You Need To Know
New Life Village offers housing, healing and resilience programs
The village aims to keep kids out of foster care
Programs range from crisis intervention and family coaching to career readiness and financial literacy workshops
The families who live at New Life Village have been affected by foster care and/or trauma. The village reports Hillsborough County has the most children in foster care in Florida.
“We don’t have enough adoptive families and we need more foster families to assist the youth that need that help,” said Mariah Hayden, executive director.
Roteashia Weathers is raising her four grandchildren, ages 8 to 17 and says she’s grateful to live at New Life Village.
“Life-changing, to be able to be happy, loving, and caring for my grandkids, and they can call something their own,” said Weathers.
Life-changing for about 170 residents who have access to a variety of resources and programs.
“There’s onsite therapy, there’s case management and there’s lots of events and activities for our kids, our caregivers and our seniors,” said Hayden, adding other programs include home ownership and literacy classes and crisis intervention and family coaching.
Weathers says the neighborhood is a nurturing one and caregivers lean on each other for support.
“It’s like a collective group of people that inspire your family because you help to inspire the family,” said Weathers.
An expanding village helping to prevent children from entering foster care or removing them from the system through adoption.
“We hope that our kids get to dream really when they leave here, that they have the confidence and the healing to have accomplished when they were here to do that,” said Hayden.
And giving caregivers the tools and stability to help them succeed outside of the village.
“They give you a lot of hope to know that you care for your children, they can still be okay,” said Weathers.
Senior citizens are also part of the community — they serve as mentors and surrogate grandparents to their neighbors.
The community has units available.