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Article Courtesy of The Miami
Herald
By Amy Fisher
Published September 11, 2007
Nearly two years after Hurricane Wilma roared
through Broward County, all 416 units in Lauderhill's sprawling
Stonebridge Gardens complex are unlivable.
Struggling residents have gone into foreclosure,
watched their credit slide into ruins and stood by as investors seeking a
bargain swept up their homes for cheap.
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maintenance fees on their still-condemned units with no
walls, exposed ceilings and dusty concrete floors.
The neighborhood, just west of
Florida's Turnpike between Oakland Park and Sunrise
boulevards, is lonely and deserted -- only an occasional
resident walks by the dreary structures with smashed
windows, torn screens and missing doors.
''We have no end in sight as to when
we are getting back home,'' said 40-year-old Ansecha Bell-Folkes,
whose two-bedroom Stonebridge condo is empty, except for a
few dead plants on the balcony. "I try not to think
about how I feel. If I think about it, I get angry.'' |
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Ansecha
Bell-Folkes stands in her gutted condo in Stonebridge Gardens in
Lauderhill.
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Hundreds of households in the condo complex are
suffering from the financial and psychological burden of waiting
indefinitely to return to some sort of normalcy.
''Not only have they had to pay their mortgage, their
maintenance fees -- they've had monthly rentals,'' said Craig Vanderlaan,
one of the founders of Adopt a Hurricane Family, a nonprofit organization
helping Broward residents recover from Wilma.
"Some have had to take on second and third jobs.
A lot of people are really struggling.''
Most of South Florida has recovered from the 2005
hurricane that killed about three dozen people statewide. It damaged or
destroyed more than 5,000 homes in Broward alone on Oct. 24, 2005.
Stonebridge Gardens -- an older condo complex built in
the 1970s and home to families and seniors with modest incomes -- was in one
of the areas hardest hit.
Many Broward condo communities hadn't kept up with
maintenance, and some residents lacked personal property insurance.
Stonebridge's financial woes worsened, as residents,
already struggling to find someplace else to live, stopped paying
maintenance fees.
The Lauderhill complex, which sustained more than $20
million in damage, has perhaps taken the longest to recover. Roofs have been
fixed, but interiors are gutted shells exposing cement walls. Repairs have
mostly languished as Stonebridge's condo associations fight with different
insurance companies over payouts.
Other condos have fared better.
In nearby the massive Hawaiian Gardens nearby in
Lauderdale Lakes, all but 48 units are livable, according to city officials.
At Sunrise Lakes in neighboring Sunrise, major
renovations are finished.
Stonebridge Gardens residents are angry that the
government hasn't done more.
''Nobody is helping these people,'' said Margaret
Walbridge, 65, a manager at a fruit shipping store who has been staying with
a friend in Tamarac since Wilma wrecked her condo. "People are losing
their homes to foreclosures. Banks are taking them. My life isn't the same
as it was two years ago.''
Like others, Walbridge's condo is empty, filled with
dangling wires.
''It's like we are never coming back,'' she said
Monday, looking at her empty building.
Broward County has spent about $900,000 to help more
than 300 low-income households that suffered from Wilma -- including some
from Stonebridge -- with repairs, rental assistance and maintenance fees,
said Marlene Wilson, county Human Services director.
The county has distributed about $5 million in state
funds to help more than 1,200 senior citizen households.
And Lauderhill city leaders have set aside $1.5
million to help residents and expedited permits, but they say they can't
resolve the insurance spat or pay for all repairs.
''We don't have the power to do that,'' City
Commissioner Dale Holness said. "We can't pay for it.''
Bell-Folkes has fallen behind on mortgage and
maintenance at Stonebridge, while paying about $800 a month to rent a
two-bedroom apartment in a city where she lives with her 2-year-old son and
11-month old daughter and husband Edgar.
''We tried for as long as we could to keep up with
everything,'' she said.
Her husband has taken extra auto repair jobs six days
a week to help pay the bills.
Now she barely sees him.
She takes the bus to save money to her job at
Stonebridge, where she answers phones in the restored office, mainly
listening to residents calling in to complain about the lack of progress.
Her family got loans and about $900 from FEMA, and
another $800 or so from the Broward Chapter of the American Red Cross, but
that's not enough to pay the bills on two homes.
''I was trying to live the American dream,'' she said
of the condo she bought in 2004. "You own a home, pay bills. But for
us, that dream was cut short.''
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