For months, residents of Fairway Oaks have sought relief of some kind from City Council.
Their Northwest Jacksonville community of 85 homes was a local Habitat for Humanity build project in 2000, but issues have since arisen, such as splits in the foundations, cracks in the walls as wide as a pencil and shifts in cabinetry and flooring.
Residents claim it’s because of shoddy work and a lack of due diligence before the community was built.
Their calls for action have grown louder in recent weeks as council decided to approve more than $2.6 million in federal grants for other affordable housing programs.
Close to $840,000 of that would go to HabiJax to build homes in the New Town community.
That didn’t sit well with residents and some council members. Until the Fairway Oaks issues have been resolved, they’ve said, more funding shouldn’t be handed over to the nonprofit for other projects.
“Fairway Oaks homes were built on a bad foundation,” said council member Reggie Brown.
Yet, council was in an awkward spot Tuesday. The federal funding had to be approved in its entirety — they couldn’t simply deny HabiJax’s portion.
Council member Sam Newby said the Fairway Oaks situation was “horrible” but that he couldn’t “punish everybody” when it came to funding projects.
Ultimately, council members went ahead with the full $2.6 million appropriation by a 16-3 vote, with Brown, Katrina Brown and Reggie Gaffney voting in opposition.
Fairway Oaks residents lost that battle, but their campaign continues — and attorneys are involved.
Mayor Lenny Curry and other city officials visited the site in the past month and sought to arrange a meeting between HabiJax attorneys and Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, which represents the residents.
Even getting everyone to the table has been tricky.
In a Thursday email to city lawyers, legal aid attorney Lynn Drysdale requested a “plan for resolution” be submitted by 3 p.m. Tuesday.
“After that time, the dynamics of this case will change significantly,” she wrote.
In a follow-up email, Drysdale wrote that JALA was not refusing to attend any meeting, but that a “meaningful proposal” would show the city and HabiJax have had a “true change of heart” in assisting residents on the issue.
The organization, she wrote, could no longer sit back and accept those issues are “not the City’s problem” and “are a result of poor housekeeping.”
No such plan was submitted.
Sam Mousa, Curry’s chief administrative officer, said the mayor sought the meeting among parties for a couple of reasons.
The first was to call on the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to test the site’s soil and water, which resulted in no issues needing to come into compliance. The second was to get them to the table to talk.
That meeting, he said, is not what he calls a “paying up” meeting. It was an opportunity to discuss issues that need be addressed by both sides. No lawsuits have been filed on the matter.
“We’ve been to the table before and gotten nowhere,” Nathaniel Borden, Fairway Oaks Homeowners Association president, told council members. He said other environmental testing needed to be done and would show the community was partially built on a former dump site.
As of Tuesday, no meeting among the parties had taken place, which gave Fairway Oaks residents another opportunity to plead for and demand help.
“I am hurt because we have been neglected,” said resident Lisa Johnson. “This is not a lawyer issue … this is a people issue.”
Johnson called it a “city problem” and wanted council members to write legislation that could assist homeowners in being relocated.
Other residents also told council members Tuesday of their situations.
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