- February 24, 2025
By Brian McMillan and Wayne Grant
A single mother with a 3-year-old walks into the Ormond Beach Housing Authority office on New Britain Avenue. She’s in trouble. She’s about to become homeless, but she has heard recently about low-rent public apartments, so she has hope. Can she have an application?
Tuesdae Kleppinger, public housing coordinator, takes calls and walk-in requests like this woman’s on a regular basis. Some are veterans. Some are homeless. People who have lost their jobs and don’t have anywhere else to go.
“A single mother or father with a child under 5, they would only qualify for a one-bedroom unit,” she said. “I only have six units, and they’re full, and the individuals have lived there for years, and they’re not going anywhere until they go to a home or to heaven because they’re on a fixed income, and they’re very happy where they are. … I have people who have been on the waiting list since 2004. That’s very frustrating to me because I have to tell the individual, ‘You can’t apply because you don’t have enough people in your household to qualify for anything larger than a one bedroom.’”
In addition to the six one-bedroom units, the OBHA manages 35 others from two to four bedrooms, and they’re all full. In the past, the waiting list has ballooned almost to 500, which translates to a five-year wait. Today, the phone number for the office informs callers that even the waiting list is closed. It has dwindled down to 88, Kleppinger said, and it might open again soon, but when that happens, a flood of applications will come in once again.
Low-rent public housing is one of two main programs administered by the OBHA, which is a local office under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The 41 apartments, located on five different streets around town (New Britain Avenue, Washington Street, Ramsey Terrace and Flormond Avenue), are owned and managed by the OBHA.
The second main program is Section 8 housing, which is more expensive; it offers vouchers for residents to help them pay rent at privately owned homes elsewhere in the city. OBHA has 219 vouchers, and all are being used. The waiting list is 471 families long.
“All I can do is refer them to Daytona housing or DeLand or Flagler,” Kleppinger said. “If they don’t have room, then they go back to sleeping in a tent.”
Kleppinger is empathetic. She grew up in public housing in Oklahoma, and, when she first moved to Ormond Beach in 2002, she was homeless. “I know how that feels, when you don’t know where to lay your head at night.”
Short-term improvements
Caroline Reviere, executive director of the OBHA, said Ormond’s public housing shortage is not unique.
“It’s worldwide,” she said. “Other agencies have waiting lists that are closed permanently because it’s like 10 years.”
Like other public housing authorities, the OBHA is reliant on HUD for funding. A 2011 report found that $26 billion worth of capital improvements were needed nationwide in public housing. The 2016 proposed budget includes $1.97 billion in the Public Housing Capital Fund.
Reviere, who took her current position in 2014, said she is still assessing Ormond’s situation to determine a course of action. But the short version of the story is that more public housing is needed. She has been told that HUD wants local agencies to raise private funds to build more housing. That would then require demolishing the current apartments, some of which were built in the 1950s, and finding temporary housing for the current tenants while new apartments are built, likely with more than one story. And that’s if she can find private investors.
“Congress has been chopping, chopping, chopping,” she said. “You can only do so much with the little that you have.”
Among the steps she can take in the meantime is to try to improve the current apartments. For example, she made a plea with the City Commission on March 17 to waive the annual payment to the city for 2013 and 2014 so the agency will have enough money to make repairs on the properties. The $15,000 payment that would be waived is called PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes. Rather than pay property taxes, OBHA makes an annual payment to the city.
She told the officials that the agency is getting a Community Development Block Grant for roof repairs on the facility at Washington Street, along with matching funds from HUD, but they have two other roofs that “are in a bad state.”
Other needs cited are playground improvements, flooring, Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades, sidewalks within the properties and outdoor lighting. “We have no sidewalks on our properties. None at all,” she said.
In January 1993, the OBHA was six years in arrears on making PILOT payments. At that time, the City Commission waived all outstanding payments due totaling $17,760. In later years, the OBHA often fell behind in payments, but eventually made them, until 2013.
Mayor Ed Kelley thanked Reviere for her leadership in “turning around” the housing. “Under your direction, the money is getting to those who need it,” he said.
He instructed City Manager Joyce Shanahan to get with Reviere and create a list of needed repairs for the City Commission to review as they decide whether to approve the waiver.
After the meeting, Rev. Willie Branch, chairman of the housing authority board, said the reason the buildings were in such bad shape is they had been neglected by previous administrations at the OBHA.
Reviere took over in 2014, and Branch said it’s a “new day” at the agency. He said it’s important to inspire people to improve themselves and get back on their feet. “You want to break the stigma of poverty and break that mindset in the tenants,” he said.
Emergency shelter
2002. Tuesdae Kleppinger slept in her Jeep. She hated chicken and dumplings, but that was the only food she had, so she opened the can and ate it cold.
Now 44 years old, she had moved to Tampa in 2002 after a divorce. She couldn’t find a job, and so when someone suggested she come to Ormond Beach with them and work, she followed along. The people proved to be untrustworthy, and so she was stuck. The stress of homelessness clung to her.
“You don’t know where you’re going to park to sleep, you don’t know where you’re going to shower,” she recalled. “The police approach you, and they really discourage homelessness in the city, and ask you what you’re doing. ‘Are you loitering?’ And the worst thing was, you go to bed not knowing what the next day’s going to bring, and you wake up trying to battle depression.”
One day she spotted a sign that said, “Emergency Shelter.” Her spirits rose. In her imagination, she drove to the shelter and took a clean shower, ate hot food and found a comfortable cot. But it was all in her imagination. She later learned that the sign referred to a hurricane shelter; it wasn’t open except in the event of a natural disaster.
After weeks of job hunting and sleeping at a rest stop on Interstate 4, where there were no bathrooms but plenty of mosquitoes, she finally drove to a motel. She told the manager, “I will clean rooms for you. You don’t have to pay me, just give me a room. I don’t want to be homeless again for the rest of my life.”
The manager agreed and let her clean rooms for $5 per hour. After her first workday of 16 hours, she finally closed the door behind her. A roof was overhead.
“When I walked into this efficiency room, it was like a mansion to me,” Kleppinger recalled. “I was able to take a hot shower an sleep in a bed, so I felt like a queen.”
Today, she is firmly settled and is working in an office that she finds fulfilling: She’s helping people get out of the same situations he once faced. She said she rarely has any issues with people trying to get away with something. Some residents seem to take the low-rent apartments for granted, but most are working to improve their lives, and she facilities their efforts by stabilizing their shelter.
But then another single mother comes into her office and asks for a one-bedroom apartment.
“When they come through the door, it moves you,” Kleppinger said. “It hurts when you can’t help them.”
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Striving for something better
One resident makes the case for the city of Ormond Beach to approve the $15,000 waiver for OBHA.
Brian McMillan
Executive Editor
Joanna Williams, 44, has lived on Washington Street for three years, and she takes pride in her low-rent apartment, supplied by the Ormond Beach Housing Authority. She bought a discounted set of chairs with bright red cushions for her patio, and she hand-painted the wooden roses in the wreath that hangs on her front door.
“It shouldn’t make a difference where you come from or how much you make,” she said. “Even if you’re poor, you still want to feel good about yourself and where you live.”
According to Tuesdae Kleppinger, public housing coordinator with OBHA, Williams is a prime example of someone who is improving her situation through public housing, without abusing the system.
Williams never planned to live on Washington Street. Five years ago, she was married with two children. She and her husband each had jobs. “I was making $9 per hour, and he was making $15, so we were well off.”
Then, divorce. Then, Williams lost her job. She applied to live in low-rent public housing and was put on the waiting list. She moved to an apartment and struggled to pay the bills every month, while applying to 10-20 jobs per week. Then, unemployment checks ran out. Then, the children’s father lost his job, and child support stopped. By 2012, she was out of options. An eviction notice arrived. “It looked like a warrant,” Williams recalled.
She called a family meeting with her children and explained that she would do everything she could to keep the family off the streets. She was frightened of the unknown, and also embarrassed that she had fallen so far.
“But it didn’t get me down, and that’s because I had faith,” she said. “Whatever it is, Heavenly Father would not let my kids be on the street. I’ve been through a lot of things I my life. He’s delivered me before, and I knew he would deliver me again.”
Finally, she went back to the OBHA with her eviction notice and explained her situation. As it turned out, she had risen to be among the top few people on the list, and so her application was approved. She had avoided the streets, after all. Now, she is going to college and has dreams of opening a holistic health clinic. She graduates in 2017 — the same year her daughter graduates from high school.
Williams has been vocal about the proposed improvements to the low-rent public housing apartments. She hopes the City Commission will approve the waiver to free up about $15,000 for the OBHA to fix roofs and improve playgrounds, etc.
After all, she said, this is Ormond Beach. The annual Christmas parade, one of the city’s best events, begins right in front of her home.
“If it’s a place where they’re going to line up, I don’t want our apartment complex to be an eyesore,” she said. She added: “I’m appreciative of even being able to live (here). I’m not complaining. It’s a blessing. But there’s room for enhancement, and you should always strive to better yourself.”
