EDITORIAL: Stop Raids on Housing Funds

December 8, 2011 | Sarasota Herald-Tribune

With the Legislature again facing a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, Florida’s affordable-housing trust funds will once more be at risk.

As we’ve seen in the past, the term “trust fund” offers no protection from legislative raiders willing to go to any lengths to avoid raising tax revenues to pay the state’s bills.

But further depleting the Sadowski housing funds — which have suffered three straight years of such raids and the loss of $706 million — would be extremely shortsighted in an economy that remains desperate for housing investments and jobs.

That’s why the Sadowski Housing Coalition — a collection of business and governmental groups, charities and advocates for the poor and elderly — is appealing to the Legislature to stop using the funds to boost the state’s general revenues.

Coalition facilitator Jaimie Ross has noted that the $166.6 million that the fund is expected to add this year could create some 9,000 jobs and $900 million in economic impact and help the state avoid future budget shortfalls. (Web: sadowskicoalition.com)

The Sadowski affordable housing funds are composed of local and state revenue from documentary-stamp taxes paid on property sales. While the recession has reduced those sales, and the need for new housing, the funds can still be used to repair and rehabilitate old apartment buildings and foreclosed, abandoned properties.

And although Florida housing prices have fallen dramatically, those prices — and lenders’ stricter requirements for home loans — are still beyond the reach of the average Florida wage-earner.

“If you have a house that was $500,000 and now it’s down to $200,000,” said Mark Hendrickson, former head of the state housing agency and now a private consultant, in a coalition press release, “how does that help someone making $20,000 or $30,000 a year?”

What might help, instead, would be renovated rental units and the rehabilitation of abandoned homes — the types of projects the Sadowski funds can help finance.

Such projects would provide jobs for unemployed construction workers, renovate eyesores that hold down property values, and give many Florida communities an economic shot in the arm.

We know that legislators must make painful budget choices in a slow-to-recover economy. But draining millions of dollars from the affordable-housing funds would jeopardize projects that can help turn the economy around. It wasn’t a sound strategy in the past, and it makes even less sense now.