3 new houses in Muncie await lucky military veterans

MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - Three new single-family houses built at costs of up to $185,000 will be marketed to military veterans for around $63,000.

"I know of a hundred veterans who are either couch-hopping or 100 percent homeless," Nate Jones, Delaware County veterans service officer, said before an open house on Monday. "It's hard to find affordable housing unless it's a dump . This gives them an opportunity to be coached into owning their own home."

Muncie Home Ownership and Revitalization, a nonprofit directed by Penny Leach, spearheaded the project. But as Mayor Dennis Tyler said at the open house, it couldn't have happened without a lot of parties coming together.

One of the houses cost $185,000 to build, another cost $180,000, and the third cost $125,000, but only because it was mostly built by high school students from the Muncie Area Career Center, Leach said.

Because of their location on Kilgore Avenue along the edge of the historic Old West End neighborhood - which is battling housing blight and vacancies - the new three-bedroom houses are being appraised at only a third of what it cost to build them.

Neighborhood association President Brad King noted the new housing is filling in empty lots where blighted houses once stood. "There is a need for affordable, clean and safe housing near downtown," he said.

Looking out the back window of one of the houses - in the 1000 block of Kilgore, near Charles Street, two blocks from Parson Mortuary - King pointed to a house that someone purchased in a tax sale, rehabilitated and moved into.

He expects the new housing for veterans to serve as another example of public investment spurring private investment in the neighborhood. "These efforts really help," he said.

Partners on the project included the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the city's Office of Community Development.

Frank Gossman, a retired chiropractor, is investing in Old West End housing after his daughter, Adrienne, who lives in New Orleans and has no prior ties to Muncie, purchased and fixed up two run down houses in the neighborhood as rental properties.

Gossman moved here. It appears to him that downtown Muncie and the Old West End are making a comeback. He also likes the fact Muncie is a college town. Gossman last lived in Pittsburgh, but he and his daughter are no strangers to Indiana, having lived in Fort Wayne, where Gossman graduated from IPFW.

Tim Foster, a Central High School student, said a contractor was hired to build the foundation of the "student house." ''We pretty much took over from there," he told The Star Press. Foster liked working with other students and watching the house rise from the ground up.

In addition to its involvement in housing construction, Leach's organization is a HUD housing counseling agency that provides down-payment financial assistance, counseling for the homeless and disabled, and mortgage education.

One candidate to purchase one of the homes is Randy Goodman, who served 1988-93 as a corporal in the Army, helping to train combat medics during the Gulf War.

"Mr. Goodman suffered a massive stroke in November of 2017 and was not expected to survive, but he beat the odds," Leach told The Star Press. "Upon his release from the hospital Mr. Goodman found that he was disabled, unemployed due to the stroke and facing the potential of being homeless."

Leach, who heard about the crisis from the Selma American Legion Post, where she is a member, was able to place Goodman and his fiancee in an apartment, though it's on a second floor.

Doctors told Goodman he would be left paralyzed on his left side after brain surgery, but it turned out they were wrong. "I waved goodbye to them with my left arm," he said, demonstrating his left-handed wave at the open house.

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Source: The (Muncie) Star Press, https://tspne.ws/2J1EysW

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Information from: The Star Press, http://www.thestarpress.com