Palmetto housing rehab a blessing for homeowner
Living in the little stucco house on 11th Street West had become an ordeal for Betty Hammond.
The air-conditioning hadn’t worked in two years.
The kitchen sink was separated from the wall.
The roof leaked.
“I was running out of buckets and pots when it rained,” the 78-year-old widow said Monday. “Hopefully, I had enough.”
After living in the house for 18 years, the retired Palmetto Elementary School custodian was too sick and too broke to get everything fixed.
“I might’ve moved in with some of my children, let me stay one place or the other,” the mother of nine said. “I would’ve been running pillar to post trying to find somewhere to live, but a blessing came to me.”
Hammond’s dwelling was chosen as the pilot home for the Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency’s new Residential Rehab Program…