NEW SMYRNA BEACH — While the city’s current Community Redevelopment Agency provides grants for residents to fix up their homes, it hasn’t been much use to some residents in the Historic Westside neighborhood who can’t afford to put up the matching funds needed to be eligible for the program.
That needs to change in the city’s proposed CRA — one slated to have U.S. 1 as its spine and also include all the Westside neighborhood that’s in the city limits — said Gwendolyn Rainge, who lives in the community. During a meeting Monday at the Alonzo “Babe” James Community Center to get public feedback on what programs and projects should be funded in the proposed CRA, Rainge told a story Monday about her neighbor whose ceiling had partly collapsed because of heavy rains. Exacerbating the issue, Rainge said, was that the house wasn’t in her neighbor’s name, but that of her mother, who is deceased.