RUSKIN, Fla. \u2014 A federal investment of $28 million is supporting a housing model that allows qualified low- and very-low-income families to help build their own homes, reducing the cost of homeownership through labor.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development announced the funding through the Single Family Housing Mutual Self-Help Housing Grants program. The money is expected to support 579 new housing units and 181 rehabilitations across the country.<\/p>\n
In southern Hillsborough County, Florida Home Partnership has used the USDA 502 Mutual Self-Help Housing program for 30 years while pursuing new development in Ruskin, according to Detra Smith-O\u2019Bryant, the organization\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives us relief to fill that gap so that our families can really have a place to call home,\u201d Smith-O\u2019Bryant said.<\/p>\n
The program allows qualified households to contribute labor toward construction. Smith-O\u2019Bryant said participants can benefit from no down payment, stronger community connections and, at times, better interest rates than they might receive through a traditional lender.<\/p>\n
Yvette Dickinson, a homeowner who went through Florida Home Partnership\u2019s mutual self-help housing program, said the opportunity helped her as a single mother of two daughters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gave me the opportunity to see what I was capable of,\u201d Dickinson said. \u201cI was the single mom of two little girls at the time, I wanted a better future for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dickinson said she was a U.S. Army veteran but still struggled to find loans she could afford as a single mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith these programs, being able to put my sweat into the home, not only was I able to show my girls hard work does pay off, but hard work also saved us some money,\u201d Dickinson said.<\/p>\n
The experience also led Dickinson into a new career. She now works for Florida Home Partnership, helping other families pursue the same opportunity, and said she recently became a certified licensed builder in Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never forget this,\u201d Dickinson said. \u201cYou never forget your first home you built.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RUSKIN, Fla. \u2014 A federal investment of $28 million is supporting a housing model that allows qualified low-…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1571,16022,27812,274,2375,276,1644,2200,115,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-431557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-affordable-housing","tag-app-housing","tag-app-latest-housing-stories","tag-app-top-stories","tag-fadia-patterson","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-housing","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-news","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431557","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=431557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}