Haines City Access Center Celebrates Grand Opening
by James Coulter
Do you need help paying your medical bills? Buying your prescription medicine? Putting food on the table? Handling a legal problem? Do you want to apply for financial assistance by don’t know how?
If you live in Haines City and you need help handling any of these issues, the city’s new access center will more than help you. No problem! Y si hablas español? No problemo!
The Haines City Access Center is your one-stop shop for help applying for state and federal programs including food stamps, temporary cash assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. If you require financial assistance, the access center can help you obtain it. Even if you have a problem and don’t know what program to apply for, they can help you with that as well.
Aside from providing all access to federal and state programs, the access center also offers other services including an insurance agency, real estate, and public notary. With both of the people in charge being bilingual, they are capable of helping you in English as well as Spanish.
Their services continue to expand with more and more opportunities to help the local community and their immediate needs. Recently, they even hired a lawyer to help clients with immigration cases, and whose services are available via appointment.
“It is our main target to help people out,” said Eddie Davila, Office Manager and Relator. “To help people who come here so they do not leave with their hands empty. We should be able to give whatever we need to do, we are here to help them out and fulfill their needs. We are more than happy to do that, and we are very proud to help people when we open the door and be able to help.”
Haines City Access Center celebrated the grand opening of its facility on Tuesday with a ribbon cutting ceremony hosted by the Northeast Polk County Chamber of Commerce (formerly the Haines City Chamber).
Davila and his wife, Irma Valentin, who serves as the Independent Benefit Consultant, started their business nearly a year ago from their public office. They had since expanded into their own facility. Some people assumed the new facility was too big, by Davila thought it was perfect, as they expect their services to grow.
“Our primary goal…[is] to provide the needs and cover the necessity of the local community,” he said. “We are going to grow, we are going to go, we are not going to stop here.”
His wife and partner, Valentin also expect their new facility to grow with new services, all the more to help the local community meet their needs by applying for services that they might not have even known about.
“What really inspired us is letting people know it that there is more than they think that is available to them from the state and federal programs,” she said. “We would like to really get in touch with the community and get the sense of what they need. If they need or have any questions regarding benefits available around them, this is the place where they can have answers and apply to those services as well.”
Mary Jane Mruczek, Chamber Membership Coordinator, appreciated such a center being provided within the local community, as their assistance will allow its residents, especially the poorest among them, to achieve a better quality of life, which in turn will help improve the quality of the local area.
“I think it opens a lot to the community,” she said. “I think many times navigating through insurance and things like that, it can be intimidating at times, but I think the warmth that Eddie and Irma have will mean a whole lot, and also them being bilingual will be a very big help within this community. I expect and hope that they flourish and they open more and more of these centers within the area.”
The Haines City Access Center is located at 118 S 10th St, Haines City, FL 33844. For more information, call 407-460-9909, or visit their website at: https://access-office.business.site/
