Non-profit launches low interest loans for home improvement just in time for hurricane season

ABC Action News

By Isabel Rosales

May 23, 2018

In this publication SELF was featured as a non-profit organization that helps families with home improvements and also lower their utility bills. To read the full story, click here.
Here is an excerpt,

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — We’re just under two weeks away from hurricane season. Yet we still drive past so many homes with blue tarps and homes not ready for the season. But a a non-profit has just launched a program to help Bay area families make those improvements.

Mom, Valentine Mathurin, and her daughter stand below a cold stream of air. But just a short time ago their thermostat wasn’t reading a comfortable number. Instead it was a boiling 90 degrees.

“The one [AC] before it was terrible. It had been here for 20 years and it looked like a monster about to take off,” said Mathurin.

Her AC system has been a headache since she first bought the house 20 years ago but an unreliable system during a Florida summer means only one thing.

“It was really hot. It was unbearable. Sometimes we stayed over at a friend’s because we couldn’t sleep here at night,”

Valentine Mathurin

She searched everywhere for a repair or replacement that wouldn’t break her wallet with no luck.

“The price, it was outrageous,” she said.
    
Until she found the Solar Energy Loan Fund” or SELF. The non-profit just partnered up with Hillsborough County and the city of St. Pete to help families like Mathurin’s afford home improvements that also lower their utility bills.

The non-profit has helped out over 800 families in Florida with loans typically going from $5,000 to $15,000 and interest rates between 5% and 9%.


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