CEDAR RAPIDS – The overwhelming uncertainty some flood victims faced about their future led some to sell their homes for as little as one-thousand dollars.

Now, one community leader wants to step in to save his neighborhood. Frank King's idea is to have the Northwest Neighborhood Association buy some of the flooded homes for a price ranging from about ten to forty thousand dollars. Then, next year, the group will sell those homes to other flood victims for the same price. So, the association will never make a profit.

The goal is to prevent people from buying large amounts of homes and turning them into rental units.

"Somebody has to stand up and speak. If nobody does, I'm of the firm belief that nothing will get done,” King said.

He blames the city council for not stepping in to stop people from selling their homes for next to nothing.

"The reason these people sold their homes for nothing is because they had no direction,” King said.

So, King created a program to buy and stabilize flooded homes and then eventually sell them to other flood victims who want to restore the properties.

"What I'm trying to do is stop the hemorrhaging before it gets any worse,” he said.

Several people offered Rebecca Campbell only one thousand dollars for her home. She thinks their only intention was to fix it up quick and rent it out.

"I wanted to jump through my skin…Each time I said, 'I'd rather give it away as long as I know this time next year, I could go by and see a family there,’” Campbell said.

Then, Campbell heard about King's program and she agreed to sell her home to the neighborhood association for about thirty-thousand dollars.

But, to her, it's not about the money. She wants to see her beloved neighborhood survive.

"This is a neighborhood you don't want to see disappear from the city because it's made this city. Without Time Check, the areas for the working people, there would be no companies here,” Campbell said.

So far, only about ten people have signed on to sell to the association. King believes each home that becomes a part of the program will act as a seed to help the neighborhood return to its working-class roots.

Right now, the program doesn't have any funding. In the coming weeks, King plans to ask the city council for money to get the program going.

If the council declines, he plans to ask the state and even some local companies for help. Even though the Northwest Neighborhood Association has created the program, any flood victim in the city can participate.