Restoration work underway on a historic cottage in the Bayou Oaks neighborhood. Local contractors are repairing and preserving original features as part of the Historic Loan Program.
When Newtown earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in April 2024, the designation validated more than 100 years of history and community-building in Sarasota’s close-knit Black neighborhood. But the community’s fabric is threatened. As downtown Sarasota swells with new residents, buyers have been heading north into Newtown, looking for an affordable neighborhood near the city center and offering prices that are sometimes too good to pass up—especially for homeowners who need to make extensive repairs to their homes.
It’s a familiar story. Erin DiFazio, managing director of the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation, says that in the 1920s and ’30s, most of the Black community resided in Overtown—a neighborhood just north of Fruitville Road, now known as the Rosemary District. Through the decades, newcomers saw the value in Overtown, with its close proximity to downtown (the Rosemary District is now one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city), and African Americans were pushed into Newtown about a mile north. The Black community ultimately thrived there and built their own homes.
Today, about 30 to 50 of these original homes, many of them built by Newtown’s founders, need restoration, but their owners can’t afford the repairs. Some longtime residents have sold and left the community. That’s why the Alliance for Historic Preservation started the Resilient Roots program in November 2025. Funded in part with two grants—$10,000 from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and $20,000 from the Newtown Community Redevelopment Agency—Resilient Roots offers 12-year loans and removes closing costs and interest on the loan for properties located in Newtown.
Since launching, three Newtown homeowners have applied for the program. With current funding, the loans are capped around $35,000. DiFazio says the program will be able to help up to five homeowners in its first year and the loan structure will ensure they can help more in the future.
“There are other situations where we are going to need to do more creative thinking,” DiFazio says. “There are some homes that are really significant to the community that need a lot more, probably upwards of $100,000 in major structural repairs.”
For now, repairs are solely exterior and focus on more attainable work like repairing wood siding with wood rot or termite damage, replacing roofs and repairing supporting frames and floor joists. It’s not the pretty stuff, but structural foundation repairs are crucial to keeping these original homes around for another decade and longer.
“It’s encouraging for folks,” DiFazio says. “These repairs have been a burden, adding stress or preventing [residents] from feeling safe and secure in their homes. This will empower them to do some of the things they’ve wanted to do, but didn’t have the means to do.”
For more information about the Resilient Roots program, click here.
