Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 4, 1994 TAG: 9407040076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But each feels lucky to have a decent place to live.
For Virginia Hinkley, it is a VMH-built house outside of Christiansburg that she moved into this month with her daughter and two grandchildren.
For Annette Rodgers, it is Friendship Village, an apartment complex in Virginia Beach that VMH manages. It has given Rodgers and four children a place to sleep.
Hinkley, her daughter Virginia Bromfield and Bromfield's 11- and 18-year-old daughters had been living in a house in Blacksburg, paying rent of $328 a month, when a new landlord increased the rent by $100. Among the four of them, the household was taking in about $1,300 a month in Social Security, Aid to Dependent Children and Supplemental Security Income, Hinkley said.
The extra $100 was too much. "We couldn't afford it," she said. "Still we've got bills to pay."
Hinkley used to work in a hospital as a nursing assistant. About six years ago, she had a heart attack and was diagnosed with diabetes; she has not been able to work since. Her daughter has been mentally and physically disabled for years.
VMH worked out a deal for them to move into the house in the Springview subdivision, where VMH has built 22 houses over the last three years. Her monthly mortgage payment is $367.
It worked through a program VMH administers that permits home buyers to put as little as $600 down on a house, with monthly mortgage payments running $250-$375.
The closing costs, which can run hundreds of dollars, are eased by grant monies, said Cynthia Schoolfield, a VMH program manager and certified housing counselor. VMH's loan programs cater to three- and four-member families with incomes of $20,000 or less.
In Hinkley's case, the corporation had to help her work out some credit problems before closing the deal on the house.
"They did not expect, [Hinkley] told me, that they would ever get into a house," Schoolfield said.
Now the money Hinkley pays is going toward something that will someday be the family's to keep, even if Hinkley is gone.
"Now we've got something to really look forward to," she said. "If it hadn't been for VMH, I don't know what we would've done."
Similar things can be heard from Rodgers, a 35-year-old single mother of four boys, who moved into Friendship Village in October 1992.
"I had nowhere else to go," she said. A graduate of Commonwealth College with a two-year degree in medical administration, she had been unable to find work in her field.
She also had endured a marriage with a drug-abusing husband who sold everything the family had of value, relegating her and the children to sleeping on floors.
They had been living in cramped quarters with her mother, surviving on welfare. She had contacted several low-income housing groups; Friendship Village was the first one that called back. Her rent was set at $75 a month with a $75 deposit, but she still had to scrimp to pull together that first month's rent.
"I didn't like being on welfare," she said. That was solved a month after moving in, when she applied for and was offered a job as assistant property manager for the complex.
It still has not been easy. "Working here and living here is hard," she said. "Sometimes I wanted to give up." Some of the residents, apparently envious of her position, have harassed her.
The complex's tenants still are awakened by the sound of gunfire. In a tourist-haven town, the neighborhood around the subsidized apartments is a stark contrast to the resort strip a few blocks away.
The residents know the drug dealers are around. Rodgers insists that they are outside elements and that the management has done better at keeping them out since hiring off-duty police officers to patrol last fall.
VMH has managed the complex for four years and has upgraded it by providing extra lighting, putting in new windows, erecting fences around it and making other improvements.
"To me, it's not any different than any other property. Anything that goes on here goes on everywhere else," Rodgers said.
Rodgers has experienced both sides of the low-income housing coin. But bottom line, she is grateful for her job and a now-furnished apartment she can call her own.
"I've got a place to stay," she said. "It's not the best place, but it's mine."
by CNB