Florida program aims to help neighborhoods help themselves

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- At 88, Lizzie Simmons has outlived three of her children and needs help just to get through the day. That help comes in the form of a nurse's assistant who happens to be a neighbor paid through an unusual state program.

Front Porch Florida is urban revitalization with a twist: It challenges residents of poor communities to decide on their own what they want to do to make things better, rather than telling them what must be done.

So far, 16 Florida communities are taking part, including Frenchtown, once the proud center of Tallahassee's black community. Here, residents decided they wanted to help the elderly so relatives wouldn't have to put them in nursing homes.

Simmons' apartment, just a few blocks from the governor's mansion, is the first stop of the morning for nurse's assistant Sabrina Newby.

"How have you been eating?" Newby asks Simmons, almost shouting so the nearly deaf woman can hear her.

"I've been doing good," Simmons replies. "I took my medicine."

Newby was trained as a nurse's assistant before Front Porch arrived. Now, along with looking after residents' health, she's part social worker, part cleaning lady. And sometimes she's just there to listen.

Under the initiative created by Gov. Jeb Bush in 1999, money is funneled to poor neighborhoods that create a committee or council of residents to choose a project to improve the area's quality of life.

Front Porch is run by the governor's office and fits with one of the themes of Bush's 1998 gubernatorial campaign -- that state government doesn't have all the answers.

Critics say the program's effects have been too few and too small, and might have been accomplished by other social service programs.