OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — Osceola County may soon get its first development for the chronically homeless.

What You Need To Know

  • Hope is to build 30 new units on North Dillingham Avenue

  • The estimated cost for the new units is $7.5 million

  • Park Place hopes to get funding from Florida Housing Financing Corp

  • Osceola County, Kissimmee want to donate about $1 million to the project

Park Place Behavioral Health Care in Kissimmee wants to create low-income housing specifically for recovering substance abuse users or mentally ill patients who are homeless like Mark Tejada.

“I was working and sleeping on the street but like I said, sometimes it gets hard being alone with nobody there,” Tejada said.

The idea is to build 30 new units on North Dillingham Avenue, on land Park Place already owns. Park Place has some older units there being occupied temporarily by patients while others are too rundown to use.

The hope is to take down what is there and create something completely new that is estimated to cost $7.5 million.

“Our case managers when we told them we were really interested in doing this project they were overjoyed,” said Jim Shanks the CEO of Park Place. “We see people every day that are desperate for a place to live and we can't always help them.”

Park Place recently put in an application for a low-interest loan with Florida Housing Financing Corp for the bulk of the funding. If that is approved, the county and the city together want to pitch in a little more than $1 million for this project.

Park Place is hoping to hear from the Florida Housing Financing Corp about their application over the summer.

The development company, Birdsong, is giving all of its developer fees back into the project to help make this happen.