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"Abilities is a place where people confront their own devastating handicaps and refuse to be devastated."
St. Petersburg Times columnist Jacquin Sanders
Provides career counseling, vocational evaluation, job development, workplace accommodation, and follow-up service to help people obtain and maintain gainful employment.
Homes for Independence
Uses HUD grants and charitable donations to acquire and renovate single-family homes and condos and makes them available for sale to persons with disabilities. Also facilitates low-interest loans for home improvement and repairs to existing residences. Services include:
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Home ownership for low- to moderate-income individuals
Enables families to achieve the ‘American Dream’ of home ownership. New homeowners receive closing costs and down payment assistance, as well as renovations to the property to bring them up to current codes or modify them for their specific needs.
Low interest home improvement loans
Up to $40,000 per household is available for qualified homeowners in Pinellas County ($75,000 in th City of Clearwater) to renovate and improve their current residences. Funds can be used for major repairs, cosmetic repairs, landscaping, or accessibility modifications. Interest rates offered by Pinellas County Community Development range from 1-5% depending on income. Very low-income homeowners qualify for loans deferred until sale. This product allows families to stay where they are, modify for aging or disability—or in increase in family size!
Affordable rentals are available in both Pinellas and Brevard Counties in Florida
HUD Section 8 vouchers are welcome on 60 units in Brevard County and 19 units in Pinellas. Units are mainly scattered-site, and many have been modified to accommodate physical disabilities. In Pinellas County, six of the units were purchased with the understanding that tenants in those units would receive up to 5% of their rent paid the first two years towards a down payment on a purchase if they continued through HFI and the ownership programs.
Property Management is offered in Brevard County
In addition to managing properties owned by HFI and Abilities HUD subsidized units, we currently manage 30 additional units in two complexes—and a condo association. Services include maintenance, rental collection, and tenant screening.
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Provides management and health care services to adults with cystic fibrosis throughout Florida.
Helps people who receive Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income explore work incentives.
Veterans Employment and Outreach Program
Provides job placement services to disabled veterans who have returned from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and are being seved at The James A. Haley Veteran's Hospital in Tampa.
Self-Employment
Provides business planning, tools, and support services that enable people to become gainfully self-employed.
CARF Accreditation
All four affiliates of the ServiceSource Network have received a three-year accreditation—the highest attainable—from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities.
Abilities Credo
"I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon – if I can. I seek opportunity – not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefits of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done."
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