The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

AN elderly man was handed the keys to his brand new home on Thompson Lane yesterday, courtesy of Urban Renewal 2.0.

Herman Bullard, 53, was overwhelmed when he toured his new $28,000 home for the first time.

In June, Mr Bullard’s house was demolished after it was discovered he was living without a roof, windows and other basic amenities.

Inspector Ricardo Richardson, commander of the initiative in that community, said he was shocked to discover how Mr Bullard was living when his team first visited the structure.

He said: “We were doing a walkabout in the community and we were taking a shortcut and we met a building – I don’t know if you can call it that, but something was here – and as we came, someone said ‘You know someone lives here?’ and I said ‘No one can’t live there’ and we went in we spoke with Mr Bullard.

“Just a week or two before that, we partnered with Michael Jones, a contractor, and we decided to call Mr Jones and let him come and take a walk with us and look at the structure. Mr Jones came with a team from Centerville and tears came to his eyes when he saw the building and he said ‘No one should live like this and we need to do something’ – the rest is history.”

Prime Minister Perry Christie, who cut the ribbon on the home, said Mr Bullard if proof that Urban Renewal is working.

But, he said, much more still needs to be done.

“It is a major event giving birth to a new home out of a desolate terrible condition that brother Bullard was living under. That in itself is great, great ,great, but there is something else happening in our community that we have to come to grips with. There are young men who are good young men who are caught up in a cycle where the culture engulfs them and they can’t get out.”

During the six months it took to build the home, Mr Bullard was housed at Great Commission Ministries.

Inline Construction company rebuilt the home with the Centerville Urban Renewal Team.