MADISON HEIGHTS, VA - Tim Heflin and his sister Patty Kay can breathe a little easier now. The mortgages that were turning on them like a cash-eating dragon are gone, yet the siblings can continue to live in their soon to be refurbished three bedroom home on Wildwood Drive. But this time it will be as renters. The owner and landlord is Rush Homes, a local nonprofit agency that works to increase available housing to people with disabilities. "It was a long process," said Allison Wingfield, Rush Homes executive director.
It came to be as part of Rush Homes' major project under way in Madison Heights, the Wildwood house and a fourplex apartment on Mays Street. In April 2007, Heflin was just about at wit's end. He'd bought the home more than a year earlier when he had a housemate to share expenses and whose contribution helped get approval for the loan to buy the house.
But circumstances changed and the housemate left the area. The resulting financial gap could not be closed, even with a second mortgage and Heflin's steady job. He works at Wal-Mart as a greeter, and also as a cashier. Patty Kay participates in a day program with a local agency. Heflin found himself making two mortgage payments every month, a total of nearly $1,300. He had no choice but to put the house on the market in hopes of paying off the debt. It went on as handicap accessible, and the ad caught Rush Homes' interest. But so did Heflin's plight, depriving one handicapped person to help another wasn't a Rush Homes goal.
So the agency staff tried to answer the question, "Would it be possible to purchase the home?" It would be a big debt for the small agency, yet Rush Homes finally worked it out. Two weeks ago, Heflin and Patty Kay moved into temporary quarters — a two-bedroom fully accessible apartment owned by Rush Homes, where they will remain as their home is spruced up and made completely accessible as promised to the many organizations that allocated grants or gifts. The goal is to be back at home by June.
Rent for the two of them will be about $500 a month, and of course, that includes the rest of the family, Patty Kay's two cats and little white dog. Ask Heflin how he feels about the missing load of debt and he gives a smile and a big sigh that can only mean relief. "This is going to be so much better," he said.
Rush Homes board member George Rowe, a contractor, is volunteering his skills to oversee the Wildwood and Mays Street project. Rush Homes already put a new roof on the Wildwood House. The biggest problem now is the sole bathroom, which is small and narrow and "is not workable for someone in a wheelchair," said Wingfield. A roll-in shower is being put in as part of the renovation. The typical ranch-style home is easier to work with than a two-story home, "but anything already built and not accessible is difficult to retrofit," said Wingfield. Doorways, bathrooms, small kitchens, stairs, and basement laundry rooms are all factors in older homes.
"It's much easier to build access if you build new, but we love to go back and improve housing stock that's existing," Wingfield said. Accessible housing is hard to find for people with physical disabilities, and also for people who live on Social Security supplemental income, about $650 a month. Rush Homes has a waiting list of 75 people, and an average wait of five years.
Shea Hollifield, deputy director of the division of housing for the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, said affordable housing for disabled persons "is one of the largest housing gaps in the state, affordable housing itself is a huge issue. Accessible housing for persons of disability is even more difficult." Between 2000 and 2005, she said, housing costs in Virginia increased 80 percent, and incomes increased 15 pe
Source: NewsAdvance.com