In Florida, 300 Volunteers Repair Homes So Neighbors Can Stay Put

In Gainesville, Florida, where the poverty rate runs around 30.8 percent — more than double the statewide figure — staying in your own home can become a quiet daily struggle. A sagging staircase, a leaking roof or a hazard a homeowner can no longer fix may be all it takes to push a longtime resident out. For more than two decades, Rebuilding Together North Central Florida has worked to prevent exactly that. As WUFT reported in April 2026, the nonprofit repairs the homes of low-income, elderly and disabled residents so they can stay put, safely, in the neighborhoods they love.

The organization's guiding question is disarmingly simple. "A person who lives here, who's lived here for 30 years and wants to live here another 30 years — how do we make that possible?" asked executive director RD Bonnaghan. To answer it, crews use a 25-point healthy-housing checklist to identify and fix the conditions that make a home unsafe, from structural hazards to accessibility barriers. For one resident named Armando, who had not been able to leave his home in two years, a new ramp replaced a shaky staircase and restored his ability to come and go freely.

“8 percent — more than double the statewide figure — staying in your own home can become a quiet daily struggle.”

None of it happens without people. The nonprofit mobilizes about 300 volunteers a year, with 150 to 200 returning annually, drawn from faith groups, University of Florida student clubs and service organizations. These are not distant donors but neighbors giving their weekends to swing hammers and build ramps for people down the road. Board member Doris Tellado, whose own son had complex medical needs, described what that felt like on the receiving end: "They are family. They treated us like neighbors of neighbors."

Founded over 20 years ago by a local Gainesville woman, the group is now expanding from Alachua County into rural Levy County and surrounding areas, where the need is just as pressing and the resources often thinner. Its model reframes home repair as something deeper than maintenance: a way of keeping communities intact, of letting people grow old among familiar faces rather than being uprooted by a broken step. In a region marked by poverty, that steady, hands-on care is a powerful form of neighborly love.