Advocates fear loss of state fund to help Jacksonville homebuyers Florida Times-Union

The Jacksonville Housing and Neighborhoods Department approved 26 Jacksonville residents last week to receive about $15,000 each in down payment assistance so they could qualify to purchase new or existing homes.

But they could be the last ones to do so after the city’s program ran out of money that day, said Wight Greger, the department’s director.

That’s because the state’s William E. Sadowski trust fund, which has helped fund affordable housing efforts in the state’s counties and municipalities, could disappear during the current legislative session.

In 2010, funds from the trust helped about 200 people in Duval County buy new and existing homes, Greger said, but if either a legislative effort to fold it into a larger fund or divert it to the state’s general fund is successful, affordable housing advocates fear such help will be a thing of the past.

Since the Legislature approved the Affordable Housing Act in 1992, Jacksonville has received about $100 million in Sadowski trust funds to help first-time homebuyers make down payments. The city has also received money through various other programs, including Florida’s State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) program, which provides funds to county and city governments to create and maintain affordable housing. The trust fund is named after a former Department of Community Affairs secretary and affordable housing champion who was killed in a 1992 plane crash.

The $100 million Jacksonville has received from the trust fund since 1993 has been a good investment because those allocations have attracted an additional $800 million in private sector funding, Greger said. There are other programs through which Sadowski funds help the real estate economy, she said. About 30 percent of the trust fund is allocated to low-interest loans to allow owners to renovate apartment buildings and keep rents low, she said.

The Sadowski trust fund is financed through a documentary stamp tax of 20 cents on every $100 of assessed or sale value in Florida real estate transfers, said Valerie Saunders, former president of the Florida Association of Mortgage Professionals.

This month, 56 members of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors went to Tallahassee to lobby for the trust fund and three other issues, said NEFAR Director of Government Affairs Nancy Garcia. The group met with most of the senators and members of the Legislature who represent Northeast Florida, she said.

With credit tight, Garcia said, it’s especially important to have the funds available to assist first-time homebuyers. That’s why members of Realtors associations, as well as builders and mortgage brokers, traveled to Tallahassee to ask that the trust fund be preserved.