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Housing agency gets new building
By JON WILSON © St. Petersburg Times, published April 15, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- Cornelius Armstrong, 58, needed a railed wheelchair ramp and lower steps to get in and out of his house a little easier. Terri Thompson, 36, had lived in subsidized rental housing, but wanted desperately to own a home for herself and her 7-year-old daughter. Janet Diehl, 59, needed help with loans so she could buy her own house. In each case, Neighborhood Housing Services stepped in. The 20-year-old nonprofit agency takes on a variety of projects aimed at helping people improve their situations. It is about to reaffirm its presence on Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street S in a big way. Plans call for NHS to break ground in June for a new 7,000-square-foot headquarters, more than three times as large as its current space. It will also increase staff from seven to nine, said executive director Askia Muhammad Aquil. More space and more staff will help NHS serve more people, Aquil said. And he hopes an attractive, new building will do one thing more: "One of the things we want to do is make a statement on the street," Aquil said. Situated in the Challenge area, the new building could provide a symbolic factor to help stimulate redevelopment in neighborhoods such as adjacent Bartlett Park, Aquil believes. "That's one of the reasons we decided to (expand) here," Aquil said. The new building will go up across Preston Avenue from the current headquarters, 1640 Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) St. S. NHS will keep the current building, perhaps leasing it. Helping rejuvenate Bartlett Park would please Diehl, whose loans NHS helped her acquire an older house in the neighborhood. "I get tired hearing from people that it's dangerous, that it's scary," Diehl said. "We have an increase in home ownership, and a number of abandoned houses have been torn down and removed." Expanding headquarters is a million-dollar project, according to the organization's budget. But the agency is preoccupied with people, not buildings. According to the organization's records, it has helped more than 100 people become homeowners since Aquil became director in 1997, the year two families were placed in homes. Ten placements followed in 1998, then 34 in 1999 and 58 in 2000. This year's goal is to place 150 to 200 new homeowners. They move in citywide, though the Challenge area has some priority, and the beneficiaries are diverse. Diehl is white, for example; Thompson, whose home is in the Central Oak Park neighborhood, is black. NHS has served Hispanics, Asians and relocating eastern Europeans, Aquil said. About 95 percent of the new owners succeed, he said. One of the reasons is an eight-hour course on how to negotiate the home buying process and how to budget afterward. "They helped every step of the way, from teaching you what to look for in buying a house, teaching you the pitfalls, helping you get fixed rates in the mortgages," Thompson said. "They just don't dangle fruit in front of your face." The agency also rehabilitates homes that need it. In Armstrong's case, crews not only improved access to his Wildwood house, they repaired water and termite damage, did tile work and replaced electric fixtures. NHS gets most of its funding from Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., a publicly funded community redevelopment group based in Washington, D.C.
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