Part of the Team
Making a Difference: John Moore, Cheryl VanLandingham, and Bart Britton of the St. Johns Housing Partnership
By Roger Peace
Florida Weatherization Network Communications Coordinator
September 12, 2011
“The whole process has come full circle for me,” said John Moore, finance manager at St. Johns Housing Partnership (SJHP). He once applied for down-payment assistance on a house from the State Housing Initiatives Partnership program, but his income was above eligibility requirements and he was refused.
Now John is part of a seventeen-member team at SJHP helping homeowners and renters save money on utility bills and conserve energy. SJHP’s multi-family weatherization assistance project aims to weatherize 4,000 housing units in a twenty-county area in north and central Florida by the end of February 2012.
The SJHP weatherization project is funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package. Approximately $5 billion has been appropriated to weatherize an estimated 650,000 homes and create up to 35,000 jobs nationwide. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that weatherization services—which include insulation, caulking, repair, or replacement of inefficient water heaters and air conditioning units, and more—will save customers an average of $358 annually.
The state program is targeted to low-income families. According to the state weatherization office, low-income families in Florida pay an average of 18 percent of their annual income for energy, as compared with 5 percent for other households.
“I appreciate the program for a variety of reasons,” said John. “It helps people better themselves, whether by helping people feed their families, or helping someone have a job. … Every day that I hire someone on my staff, I am doing something for the labor force. Every invoice that we process, we’re keeping small businesses afloat. We know that every home weatherized means that someone will be saving money in the coming months.”
John grew up in a single parent home in Orlando. He attended North Carolina Central University, where he earned a B.A. in accounting. Immediately before joining SJHP, he acted as a consultant for Jones and Jones, but had no permanent job or benefits. He was hired by SJHP on July 12 and quickly invested himself in the project. His duties involve fiscal management, financial reporting, managing office facilities, and hiring administrative staff.
All of the seventeen people hired by SJHP to coordinate the project in the home office were previously unemployed or underemployed. Among the positions are three “territory managers” who oversee work in the field, a document specialist who ensures that the state’s criteria are met, and a contract manager who recruits subcontractors and private businesses to do the weatherization work.
Beyond the central hub, SJHP has contracted with energy analysts in Florida counties to conduct home inspections. The next phase, said Moore, “will involve employing people in the various communities—crew chiefs and laborers, air conditioning people, and others—who live in Gainesville, Ocala, and elsewhere… The stimulus is helping these communities in a variety of ways. The program brings jobs to communities.”
At the home office, he added, “we’re learning every day. The state has been very helpful in working with us and making adjustments in its policies and procedures. It has been very, very helpful in helping us get this process down.”
Will SJHP reach its goal of weatherizing 4,000 multi-family housing units in 20 counties by the end of February? “I think we will,” says John. “We have the foundation. The project director and our management team have a solid plan of attack. There will be a lot of smiling faces at the end of this.”
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“I am helping to build the project from the ground up,” said Cheryl VanLandingham, Executive Administrative Assistant at SJHP, “I welcome the challenge… It gives me a chance to really fine tune and showcase my ability to fashion something into a working program. It is really enriching to know that my input makes a difference.”
Cheryl came to SJHP with twenty-five years of management support experience. Since graduating from Rockledge High School in Brevard County in 1988, she has worked in the medical, automobile, and construction fields, including a five-year stint as office manager for Custom Homes of Port Malabar.
Five years ago, she moved to St. Augustine with her husband and four children, ages ten to fourteen at the time. She began attending St. Johns River State College. “I needed to get out of my comfort zone,” she said. She earned an A.A. degree and is currently working toward a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management.
Cheryl takes care of virtually anything needed by the director, which includes pulling together management teams and consulting with housing inspectors and property management companies. “This is my first time working for a nonprofit agency,” she said, adding that laborious efforts were needed to obtain the requisite funding to “get things accomplished.”
Working Together to Make a Difference
