Nonprofit on its own trying to help lagoon, fix affordable homes for 40 people | Opinion
Laurence ReismanWith all the talk about the need for affordable housing in Indian River County, you’d have thought it would have been a breeze for a nonprofit to seamlessly renovate Pelican Island Cottages on U.S. 1 just south of Sebastian.
You’d have thought wrong.
The Source, which serves the homeless and poor hot meals, clothing, showers, counseling, vocational training and benefit referral at a service center in Vero Beach, acquired the former motel complex south of Sebastian, operating since 1936, for $1.35 million in December 2021.
As part of its mission ― to “support and serve the community, and lead individuals to a saving faith in Jesus Christ” ― The Source provides emergency shelter through two “Dignity Buses” that sleep a combined 36 people who pay $2 per night.
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Different model than Camp Haven
Through donations, The Source has begun to buy buses, such as a 1999 Van Hool coach with 500,000 miles on it, and retrofit them into temporary housing by paying formerly homeless clients. Anthony Zorbaugh, The Source’s executive director the past five years, said he hopes to sell one to Rhode Island officials for an emergency-shelter pilot program.
Zorbaugh found Pelican Island Cottages after searching several years throughout the county ― on Oslo Road, out west, at former packinghouses ― for sites to build a village of tiny homes modeled after Community First! Village in Austin, Texas.
Nonprofits renovating old motels is not unusual. In 2012, The Source’s former leaders turned the old Citrus Motel at 3256 U.S. 1, Vero Beach, into a transitional shelter for homeless and at-risk men, Camp Haven. It is now run by a different agency.
Pelican Island Cottages, however, would be different.
“We bought a business with the intentions to run it the same way it has been for over 50 years,” Zorbaugh said. “Nothing more or less. We plan to upgrade the facility to offer something affordable in our community.”
While Zorbaugh said prior owners charged $1,000 a week for the units (I found online reviews saying cottages rented for $85 and up a night; Google raters gave it a 3.5 of 5 stars), The Source has dramatically fixed up the place and has these proposed units:
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Rents start at $450 a month
Four efficiencies starting at 300 square feet would be $450 a month, including utilities and cable; 12 one-bedroom units, $500; two, two-bedroom units, $650.
They’re small, but nice; especially compared to the gnarly, unrenovated cottage Zorbaugh showed me with bullet holes in a window.
Renovated cottages have newly tiled showers, electric cooktops, refrigerators, laminate flooring and more. They're furnished. Patrons can sponsor a cottage for $12,000 and get the right to name, decorate and paint it.
The cottages will have security cameras, a laundromat, chapel, community room and other amenities.
“The single greatest reason for homelessness is a profound, catastrophic loss of family,” Zorbaugh said, citing The Source’s effort at helping those in need. “Housing will not solve homelessness, but community will.”
About 40 people could be served by 18 units without government help. Contrast that to Indian River County’s years-long effort to buy the former Gifford Gardens complex (once home to 55 razed 1960s-era apartments) and get Habitat for Humanity to build 14 homes there for an average selling price of $206,000. Gifford Gardens redevelopers would get more than $350,000 in public subsidies to build the homes.
Zorbaugh said he hoped to renovate one cottage a month and apply for grants to replace the cottages' septic system. That was important, he said, to check off a second major Indian River County goal: helping the Indian River Lagoon.
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Indian River Lagoon expert attracted to The Source
The sewer project helped interest Bob Ulevich in joining The Source’s board of directors. The Palm City resident was longtime chair of the management board of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program.
“How can you not support this?” asked the Florida former water management district executive, who said he grew up in a trailer. “And if you talk about doing something for the lagoon, we’re doing it.”
The Source never had an opportunity to apply for grants. Within weeks of buying the cottages — across the street from lagoon-front property — the Florida Department of Health in Indian River County received an anonymous complaint, passed along by “county administration,” that the old motel’s septic tank system had failed.
Julianne Price, the department’s local environmental administrator, and her team inspected the site and determined four one-bedroom units and two washing machines were more than the system could handle.
The county’s Environmental Control Hearing Board will hear the matter at its 12:30 p.m. meeting Thursday.
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Source: Sewer project almost done
The sewer project is nearing completion, Zorbaugh said.
“We’re at the mercy of the supply chain,” said Zorbaugh, who has raised more than $400,000 to complete the work.
Pete Sweeney, who represents the nonprofit in the case, has an interesting perspective as a longtime municipal and construction lawyer.
“The Source has done everything in its power to rectify and meet the sanitation and health standards … without a dime of government money,” said Sweeney, noting the millions of dollars Florida governments have allocated for septic-sewer conversions. “It would have been nice if we would have had the ability to apply for some of these grants.”
If local officials are really concerned about affordable housing, it would be nice to make efforts to deliver it easier.
“We’re just trying to help people,” Zorbaugh said. “Knowing what to do is not the same as doing it; and we’re doing it.”
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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