By The Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Homelessness and housing insecurity are crippling issues for nearly every U.S. city, which might lead a reasonable person to conclude these are universal problems.
And yet local governments are constantly being asked to invent the elusive wheel that might spin fast enough to keep up with our insatiable societal need for shelter. Each municipality somehow has to devise its own solution, hoping its efforts will work — and praying they don’t work so well that they attract too many more people in need from other places.
Adding a stinging insult to the injury of offering no coherent strategy for increasing the stock of decent low-cost housing, Florida’s legislators have consistently raided a state fund designed to pay for this housing at the local level. According to The Sadowski Housing Coalition, a nonpartisan advocacy group of 30 business and nonprofit organizations, the Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust Fund could serve its purpose considerably more effectively — if only the money weren’t whisked away every year to help lawmakers appear as though they’re producing a balanced budget.
The Sadowski fund was created through a remarkable consensus between the construction industry, charities and governmental organizations. An increase in the “doc stamp” fee on real estate transactions has generated some $5.9 billion in the last 25 years, to be used on affordable housing programs and job training.
But someone forgot to lock the Sadowski fund’s back door — so an estimated $2.3 billion of that total has disappeared into the annual Tallahassee shell game where creative funding mechanisms are quicker than the eye.
According to a story by Gannett capital bureau reporter John Kennedy, new bills (HB 381 and SB 306) would place a padlock on that door and make it a little more difficult to jimmy.
“But that legislation looks like a long shot,” Kennedy wrote. It’s just so much easier for politicians to have a relatively obscure source of ready cash — as in 2019, when $115 million was snatched up to rebuild housing in the Panhandle after Hurricane Michael, and $125 million went for, oh, some other stuff.
That left about $85 million or so for the fund’s intended purpose, if legislators could manage to keep their hands to themselves.
They really should. No other social challenge in this state touches off as much collateral damage as the scarcity of affordable housing. Nearly 2 million Florida households are categorized as “cost-burdened” — trapped into spending more than 30% of their monthly income on mortgage or rental payments. And almost half of that number pay more than 50%, an unsustainable drain on family budgets.
The result: missed car payments, or cars that don’t run; lost wages due to absence; children who don’t make it to school; groceries that don’t make it to the table. Despair.
It’s true — and legislators count on your believing this — that the Sadowski fund alone can’t lift Florida’s burden of homelessness and housing security.
But shouldn’t it be allowed to do its very best?
A print-ready PDF is available here.