Tymber Skan neighborhood hopes to turn things around

Article Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel

By David Damron

Published June 16, 2014

   

They called it Tymber Skan on the Lake, evoking a familiar picture-postcard Florida setting when it opened in the early 1970s on Lake Catherine.
  
When Chuck Hankins' mom moved there in 1979, her neighbors were snowbirds, retirees and working-class folks.

  

But today, Tymber Skan conjures a different image: one of desperation, hardship and neglect.

What happened?

"Every social ill of the last 50 years has come home to roost in Tymber Skan," said Robert Spivey, Orange County's code-enforcement chief.

Hurricanes. Crime. The Great Recession. Chronic unemployment. They all combined to

wreak havoc on the Orange County condominium community that today is littered with broken and boarded-up windows, bashed-in doors and other units that have become playpens for vandals.

Piles of trash and furniture dot its grounds.

Video footage of a recent news conference there on crime problems went viral online because gunshots rang out in the background as Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings spoke.

Residents have become so desperate that they've been pleading with county commissioners this month to stop the Orlando Utilities Commission from turning off water at the complex because of tens of thousands of dollars in overdue bills.

The county is vowing to help solve the problem and, residents hope, bring a larger turnaround as well.

Despite its ills, some who live in the low-income community are not ready to give up or walk away. Others have nowhere else to go.

"We don't want to just lay down," said Dwayne Thompson, who lives and works there with his family.

It took decades for the working-class neighborhood to reach this low point.

In the mid-1980s the mix of residents started shifting from owners to renters. Of its 300 or so units still around today, only about 20 are owner-occupied, county officials say.

By the late 1980s, foreclosures took root, though condo units still sold in the healthy $30,000-to-$40,000 range. This year — and for much of the past 15 years — units have been often unloaded for less than $10,000, records show.

Hankins said a key problem was that the homeowners associations couldn't screen renters the way apartment complexes could.

Slowly, the community wrestled more with crime, at times turning to a gated entrance or hiring costly security guards. In the 1980s and 1990s there were shooting deaths of two tourism workers who lived there, each in separate incidents.

Over time, Hankins said, he could see the white flight occurring as a handful of black residents moved in.

By 2000 Tymber Skan's embattled homeowners associations had landed in the same utility trouble as exists today. Back then, OUC threatened to cut off water there unless the owner groups came up with the $71,000 they owed, which would have prompted evictions. Like now, the residents managed to work out a deal to stay.

Even then, the decline was evident. The pool was filled with algae, and weeds and trash were a problem.

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