List includes access to healthcare, healthy food, childcare, transportation, youth activities
By Yazmil Soriano
From the July-September 2025 issue of Critical Times. Print versions are available for free at WSLR+Fogartyville and other community gathering spaces in Sarasota and Manatee counties.
On a Friday evening in May, Newtown residents gathered for the first codesign workshop for the Newtown Family Center, a beacon of hope for a community that often feels overlooked.
Parents and guardians from the four Title I schools in Sarasota’s 34234 zip code shared their dreams for their children, their faces reflecting daily triumphs and struggles.
The facilitated conversation was led by Talethia O. Edwards, a national speaker on community resilience and sustainability. She emphasized the growing focus at both the state and federal levels to invest in community-led projects, especially after hurricanes devastate economically depressed neighborhoods.
Newtown is Sarasota County’s only Racially and Ethnically Concentrated Area of Poverty (RECAP), a HUD designation that is key for the county to receive Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery. In accepting these funds, the county commits to addressing the unmet needs of its most economically distressed, low- to moderate-income households.
Parents identified critical needs, including access to healthcare, healthy food, childcare, transportation and youth activities, especially after school and during the summer. The discussion quickly highlighted the immense stress caused by the three 2024 hurricanes (Debby, Helene and Milton).
Residents shared stories of helping neighbors despite their own homes being damaged, showcasing the community’s spirit and unwavering hope. “Most of us were affected one way or another,” offered Sarah, a long-time resident and grandmother. “We look out for each other. When the hurricanes hit, we were the first ones helping our neighbors, even when our own homes were damaged.”
United Way Suncoast reported that its disaster recovery grants program served 2,658 people in Newtown’s 34234 zip code from December to March, the highest concentration in Sarasota.
The workshop also laid bare Newtown’s severe lack of resources. Half of the children in this area of 2 square miles live below the poverty line, with the remaining families falling within the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) threshold, just one unexpected expense away from crisis.
A single car repair or a few days off work can set a single mother like me back months, especially when considering the 2024 survival budget for a family of four in Sarasota County is more than $104,000, a figure many Newtown families cannot meet despite working.
Sarasota’s poorest zip code also had one of the highest child removal rates in the three-county region. Nathan Scott, Child and Family Well-Being System Coordinator for the Family Safety Alliance, noted that a lack of options in such difficult circumstances can “cement poverty and learning deficits that define a lifetime” for children.
The Newtown Family Center, with its vision of permanent spaces for medical care, parenting classes, literacy programs, food distribution and tuition-free early learning, emerged as a vital solution. This center is not just a building; it’s a promise of resilience and self-reliance.
To Sarasota County leaders, we urge you to allocate HUD federal funds to help build the Newtown Family Center. This would allow our county’s non-profit sector and social service organizations immediate access to support the 3,200 children of poverty attending Emma E. Booker Elementary, Dreamers Academy, Booker Middle and Booker High School.
To the tremendously generous and financially blessed Sarasota philanthropic community, with its more than 17,000 millionaires, the parents of Newtown extend an urgent call to action. You have celebrated the arts with magnificent donations; now, we ask you to extend that same spirit of investment to the human potential residing just a few miles from our coastal playground, in our historic neighborhood of Newtown.
To be part of co-designing and co-founding the Newtown Family Center, email info@newtownfamilycenter.org or call 941-867-0779.
Yazmil Soriano is a Newtown resident and single mother caring for her daughter and goddaughter. Formerly community engagement liaison and special programs manager of Healthy Start Coalition of Sarasota, she is a neighborhood leader of Newtown Estates. As a member of the Newtown Family Center Steering Committee, Soriano is developing the Parent Advisory Committee, a critical component of the placed-based model.