SANFORD, Fla. — A Sanford Housing Authority complex is so run down the government wants to tear it down and it wants to pay all the residents of the Lake Monroe Terrace (see map) money to move out.
Some families will receive more and others less, but HUD has allocated a total of $1.3 million to get families out of the dilapidated complex. That amounts to about $15,000 per family.
With drab beige paint and broken out windows, Lake Monroe Terrace has looked like a complex in decline for years. Soon, it won't even have tenants.
Valerie Wilson spread the word among her neighbors.
"Everyone started screaming! We were all elated that it finally had worked in our favor," she said.
Wilson first showed WFTV her apartment's problems in June when word got out that the Sanford Housing Authority was planning to demolish the whole complex described as "obsolete, uninhabitable and beyond repair."
Some of the units are in such bad shape they've simply been emptied out and boarded up. They've sat that way for months or even years. Now, after years of promises, the feds have given the Authority $1.3 million to relocate all 86 families and help them with their new rent.
"We could go to an apartment. We could find us a house, something decent," tenant Alexis Boykins said. "I just want a better living for me and my kids."
Most of that money will come to tenants as housing vouchers to subsidize rent in private apartments or homes anywhere in Seminole County. The new housing must be inspected for safety and price before HUD will let tenants move in.
Residents are wasting no time.
"The second I find a house that is according to their standards and it meets their inspection and things like that, we're out of here," Wilson said.
Sanford's housing authority is in so much turmoil on its own that the Orlando Housing Authority is actually running the relocation process for tenants.
There's no firm move-out deadline yet, just as there's not yet any money to tear down and rebuild the complex.
WFTV has covered a number of problems with the Sanford Housing Authority in the past. A federal report found, in addition to the poor living conditions, the agency was broke.
WFTV broke the story a few months ago when it was learned residents had been living there for two years without heat. WFTV also found out some residents weren't getting utility assistance checks that the Authority was supposed to send them.