{"id":131079,"date":"2020-12-11T10:55:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T07:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/florida-man-pays-neighbors-utility-bills-for-a-second-straight-christmas\/"},"modified":"2020-12-11T10:55:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T07:55:25","slug":"florida-man-pays-neighbors-utility-bills-for-a-second-straight-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/florida-man-pays-neighbors-utility-bills-for-a-second-straight-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"#Florida man pays neighbors’ utility bills for a second straight Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Florida man pays neighbors’ utility bills for a second straight Christmas<\/strong>”
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A kind-hearted Florida businessman is playing Santa for the second holiday season in a row \u2014 this year reportedly paying the overdue utilities bills for 114 families who were at risk of losing service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year to me probably is more meaningful than last year with the pandemic and all the people out of work having to stay home,\u201d Michael Esmond, 74, told CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Esmond, the owner of a pool installation company in Gulf Breeze, shelled out over $7,600 this year for families whose bills were past due, the city\u2019s utility billing supervisor, Joanne Oliver, told the outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can\u2019t afford to pay their bills and put food on the table, so I hope doing my part and paying some bills for these folks takes a little bit of stress off of them around Christmas time,\u201d Esmond said. <\/p>\n

In addition to the pandemic, Gulf Breeze, a city on the Florida Panhandle, endured the wrath of Hurricane Sally.<\/p>\n

Esmond said he was able to continue his generosity because his business this year did well.<\/p>\n

Last year, he paid $4,600 to help 36 families pay their water and gas bills.<\/p>\n

But the business owner wasn\u2019t always in the financial position he now enjoys, something he said helps him empathize with those struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been down on my luck like people are today, where I had trouble paying bills and raising three daughters,\u201d he told CNN. \u201cThe gas company shut the gas off and we didn\u2019t have any heat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can relate to people suffering and not being able to pay bills,\u201d Esmond said. \u201cThat\u2019s probably one of the biggest motivators for me, because I\u2019ve been there.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Florida man pays neighbors’ utility bills for a second straight Christmas” A kind-hearted Florida businessman is playing Santa for the second holiday season in a row \u2014 this year reportedly paying the overdue utilities bills for 114 families who were at risk of losing service. \u201cThis year to me probably is more meaningful than last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/shutterstock_794159299.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[83390,70301,70577,6642,68],"class_list":["post-131079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-11-20","tag-bills","tag-donations","tag-florida","tag-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}