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With city chipping in, homes get face lifts
By JENNIFER GOLDBLATT, Times Staff Writer NEW PORT RICHEY -- Last fall, the city created four plans to encourage people to fix up their homes. The inducement: free money. Officials then sat back to await an expected flood of homeowners eager to take advantage of grants of up to $2,000. Six months later, they totaled up the applications. It didn't take long. Only three people took the money. As Pasco County leaders consider a major redevelopment effort focused on some of the most run-down neighborhoods off U.S. 19, they might look to New Port Richey for examples of what doesn't work -- and what does. In New Port Richey, the first lessons were that the incentives need to be substantial, and the programs need to be very simple, with no strings attached. So in May, the city simplified the grant conditions and raised the maximum grant to $5,000. Suddenly, demand exploded. The hoped-for chorus of hammering, repainting, and reconstruction began echoing throughout the neighborhoods, transforming a city long nicknamed New Port Rickety. The city has approved 77 home improvement grants worth $113,000. For that investment, the city has reaped an eightfold return, as homeowners spent about $914,295 of their own money on those projects. "In every community, there is a threshold at which people will invest their own money," said Jerry Paradise, the city's redevelopment director. "In this case, it was $5,000 instead of $2,000. It gives them the opportunity to move ahead when they thought the times weren't good enough to do that." The hope is that this wave of resident spending will boost the city's appearance and property values and spur commercial development. That will be critical in the next five years because All Children's, Community and North Bay Hospitals all plan to leave the city. "If housing is depressed, you don't see the growth of the business there," Paradise said. "But if businesses go into a location and see there's healthy residential market and spendable income, that's where they'll want to be." The housing grants are a small part of New Port Richey's long-term blueprint for redevelopment. Just $500,000 is set aside for the grants in the city's $20-million five-year spending plan. City leaders have envisioned grand plans for the Hacienda Hotel, the Richey Suncoast Theatre, a parking garage and bike trails. But so far, the small housing grants have gotten the most positive public reception and achieved the quickest, most visible results. "Residents take pride in it," said Rick Snyder, the city's finance director. "The grant program puts money directly in residents' pockets. Sometimes with other big programs, residents look at and say, 'What?' But this they can understand." The grants have attracted even one of the city's most vocal critics, Anne Bully. At City Council meetings, she has railed against assessments, stormwater runoff fees, water rate increases, and even the redevelopment plan that made the grants possible. But earlier this month, she applied for a $1,000 grant to help pay for her roof repair, a $3,250 job. "There's a lot of things (the city) does that I'm against," Bully said. "But I feel that since they went ahead and did what they wanted to do, I feel that every human being that's a citizen of New Port Richey that needs any kind of work done, and can match the grant, should make a go of it." The program has already shown that a little city investment can go a long way. Take Gwen Musser and William Haley, who received a $1,000 city grant to paint their home on Delaware Avenue. The grant helped the couple transform the house from "fake, red brick and white beigy stuff," in Musser's words, to a smooth shade of "lalique" that reminds her of mint ice cream. Since they were already at it, the couple decided to invest in hurricane-resistant windows, which cost $5,000. They probably would have painted without the grant but held off on the windows, Musser said. "And the windows make a huge difference," she said. "For two days, we liked them so much we were reluctant to close the curtains." Two blocks over, on Wyoming Avenue, Ruth Frasier recently noticed that her neighbors across the street were resodding the lawn. When they told her about the grant, she decided to install sprinklers, do some landscaping and touch up the paint on her own house. "Just to make it look a little neater," said Frasier, who will receive $1,000 in city money to help pay for the $2,125 job. The improvement continued to spread. Frasier's daughter, Michelle Hagar-Kostas, also lives across the street. When she saw the upgrades going on all around her, she decided to repaint her house. While Hagar-Kostas was at it, she decided to replace some rotting shutters and the cement slabs on her porch. "If I'm going to get the money back from the city, I'll take it and put it back into the house," said Hagar-Kostas, who received $875 from the city for the $1,750 project. "I was kind of planning on doing it anyways, but now, with the city money, this gave me the incentive." Frasier, who has lived in the city for 22 years, is happy to see all the activity. "There are many parts of the town that really need some sprucing up," she said. "People are driving by and see some of these areas and say, 'I don't want to live there. I'll go to a new housing development.' " But that could change with the wave of home improvement. Mark Krajewski found exactly what he was hunting for while driving around Frasier's neighborhood: just the right fixer-upper in an area on its way up. He spent $60,000 to gut, expand and completely make over a home on Illinois Avenue. The city chipped in with $5,000. "I looked for quite some time for a house and made sure it was in the right area that could sustain the amount of improvement I was going to do," he said. "I feel it is, right where I am." New Port Richey home improvement grantsPaint Up, Fix Up: The city will provide a matching grant of up to $1,000 for homeowners who improve the exterior of their homes in any way. That includes painting, installing new windows, doors or driveways or replacing a roof, fencing or shutters. Residential Redevelopment: The city will provide matching grants up to $5,000 for homeowners or builders who make a substantial improvement, such as building a new home, adding a room or doing major remodeling work. The home must be valued at or below $60,000 prior to the work. The improvements must boost the property value by at least $10,000. For both programs:The home must be in city limits. The owner, not renters, must live in the home after the improvements. You must apply for the grant before you begin. The city will make the grant on a reimbursement basis. All work must meet the city's building codes. For information call 841-4500, ext. 261, or e-mail deboerv@cityofnewportrichey.org.
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