HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Two Army veterans are getting mortgage-free homes in Riverview through Building Homes for Heroes and Built to Honor.<\/p>\n
Through this, more than 100 homes are created nationwide for veterans injured in combat since 2013.<\/p>\n
Army veterans Ryan Heard and Carson Shaw were both chosen to receive homes. Heard said his family has been trying to find a home for themselves for a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking to somebody the other day, and they said, man, that\u2019s got to be a dream come true,\u201d Heard said. \u201cI was like, really, it\u2019s not, because there\u2019s no way I could have ever dreamed something this amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heard joined the Army in 2007 at 17 years old. In 2013, he suffered a traumatic brain injury from an IED explosion and received a Purple Heart.<\/p>\n
Heard said stability is a priority for his family, but that has been difficult without their own home.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we\u2019re living in a single bedroom,\u201d Heard said. \u201cThe fact that we\u2019re going to go from a single bedroom to our own home means so much to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tony Campano, Vice President of Procurement for Pulte Homes, said the organization could not choose just one family when it came down to Heard and Shaw.<\/p>\n
He said the homes are designed to fit each family\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them have PTSD, more mental disabilities, some of them have more physical disabilities,\u201d Campano said. \u201cSo we make sure we cater their home to be a home that they can live in for the rest of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campano said the homes will be the seventh and eighth homes built in Florida through the effort and should be finished by November.<\/p>\n
Heard said the home will have a major impact on each member of his family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey get to have their own rooms,\u201d Heard said. \u201cThey get to grow up in them. They get to create memories. As a family, we will create memories.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Two Army veterans are getting mortgage-free homes in Riverview through Building Homes for Heroes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[28924,16022,274,2161,276,2200,4628,115,135,137,136,278,2032,3393,835],"class_list":["post-318656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-ach-housing","tag-app-housing","tag-app-top-stories","tag-government","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-veterans","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}