Helping people become self-sufficient is at the core of what officials at the Gainesville Housing Authority preach.
Led by Pamela Davis, executive director of GHA, the housing authority will be opening its ELITE Training Center to provide job training and business development programs for GHA residents, as well as the broader Gainesville community.
The job training center will operate in partnership with area businesses to provide individuals with the skills necessary to obtain employment, advance their careers, and boost earning potential. ELITE is an acronym for empowerment, life skills, innovation, training and entrepreneurship.
The authority established entrepreneurial and job training programs for its residents not long after Davis took over, and Mike (“Mike P the Barber”) Power is one of the many people who have benefited.
In and out of jail in his 20s, Power said he couldn’t get a job anywhere because he was a violent felon. That led him to become a barber. He started off by cutting his kids’ hair, his own hair, and “some of my homies,” Power told the Gainesville Guardian several years ago.
He enrolled in barber school in 2013, and after working at several barber shops and salons in Gainesville, GHA gave him a microloan to help him get his business started and provided him with rental space to run his business, “Winner’s Circle,” that was located at 2626 E. University Ave. in the building that now houses the job training center.
“I’m really grateful for the opportunity the Gainesville Housing Authority has given me,” Powers told The Guardian in 2019. “It will blow your mind to see where I was a year ago to see where I am now in life.”
Others will be able to take advantage of the GHA job training program by attending an open house for the ELITE Force program from 4-6 p.m. May 29 at 2626 E. University Ave.
The goal of the program is to help people and families improve their quality of life through entrepreneurship, GED classes and industry certifications, and participation in the Gainesville Youth Academy. East Gainesville, especially the Pine Meadows and Lake Terrace neighborhoods in the vicinity of East University Avenue and Northeast 25th Street, will be the core areas to be transformed and revitalized by the CHOICE grant, GHA officials say.
The future of that area can be transformed and revitalized if a $500,000 U.S. Housing and Urban Development CHOICE Neighborhoods Planning Grant materializes into meaningful change. The grant is meant to revitalize public housing and encourage community development that will include transforming 1.5 miles of east Gainesville, officials said in an article published in The Sun in 2023.
“The residents have a place to say how they want the community to look like,” Freddie Jones, a GHA resident services specialist, told The Sun in 2023. “This is an amazing opportunity, because how often does someone ask you what you want, and create what they ask for?”
The two-year planning grant includes community members, GHA residents and nonprofit organizations working together on a plan to revitalize the area from Southeast 31st Street to Waldo Road and from Southeast Eighth Avenue to Northeast Eighth Avenue, officials say.
Once the planning stage is successful, the partners in this project can receive a HUD implementation grant for the CHOICE neighborhood, Jones said.
This story and others like it are included in the Gainesville Guardian newsletter. This free newsletter arrives by email at 5 a.m. every Wednesday. Sign up for the newsletter today at https://profile.gainesville.com/newsletters/manage/ If you have any questions, please email Guardian Editor Cleveland Tinker at ctinker@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Housing authority moving forward with plans to transform residents’ lives in east Gainesville
Reporting by Cleveland Tinker, Gainesville Sun / The Gainesville Sun
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