SHIP Program Provides New Home for Sumter County Resident

In a joint-funding effort from the Sumter County Board of County Commissioners and the Florida State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) program, Lynn Diss and her daughter have a brand new home.

Diss and her daughter have been Sumter County residents for 10 years when she moved here to help care for her father. They had been living in a manufactured home with an add-on. The new 3-bedroom, one-bath home also had to be handicap-accessible for Diss's daughter. The home also features a living room, kitchen, utility room and eating area. One of the more basic home commodities is something Diss is most looking forward to. "I'll be happy to have a washer and drier in the home again," she said.

SHIP funds will be made available to homeowners for the construction of a new site built home to replace their unsafe structure where rehabilitation is not financially feasible. The funds will be used for the demolition of all unsafe structures that pose immediate threat to the public's health, safety and welfare located on the property and the construction of a new home to include necessary upgrade or replacement of well and/or septic system. One focus of the program is to get people out of mobile homes and into single family home structures that are more energy efficient and more capable of withstanding strong winds and bad weather.

Florida Housing administers the SHIP program, which provides funds to local governments as an incentive to create partnerships that produce and preserve affordable homeownership and multifamily housing. The program was designed to serve very low, low and moderate income families.