By: John Chambliss | News Chief
From his seat in the County Commission’s chambers Tuesday, George Lindsey urged state lawmakers to stop raiding the affordable housing trust fund to balance the budget.
BARTOW — County Commissioner George Lindsey is again criticizing state lawmakers for what he says is their fiscal irresponsibility.
From his seat in the County Commission’s chambers Tuesday, Lindsey urged state lawmakers to stop raiding the affordable housing trust fund to balance the budget.
“If we were to go into that fund, it would just be a lot of IOUs,” Lindsey said during a meeting of the county commission. “They’ve been using it to balance the budget elsewhere.”
Lindsey said the money should help ease homelessness throughout the state.
He told County Manager Jim Freeman that he’d like to add the issue to next year’s legislative agenda when commissioners meet with state lawmakers from the area. Freeman said he already planned to add the item to the agenda.
Florida has the country’s third highest homeless population, nearly 34,000, behind New York (86,000) and California (118,000), according to the 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Recently, the state’s affordable housing trust fund has collected about $200 million to $300 million each year from documentary stamp taxes, an excise tax on real estate transactions.
In 2017, the Senate proposed spending $162 million of $292 million in the trust fund on affordable housing, while the House only wanted to spend $44 million, the Miami Herald reported.
Since the recession in the 2008-09 fiscal year, of the $1.87 billion collected and deposited in the trust fund, lawmakers diverted nearly $1.3 billion to other purposes — from tax breaks to spending, the newspaper reported.
The trust fund, which the Legislature passed as the Sadowski Act in 1992, created a dedicated source to fund the state’s affordable housing programs and fund the Catalyst Program for Training and Technical Assistance, according to the Sadowski Coalition website.
Lindsey said he knows the money that has been taken from the fund will never be seen again. But he said this year legislators should stop the process of bleeding the fund.
Rep. Sam Killebrew, R-Winter Haven, said he plans to speak with Lindsey and delve further into the issue.
“If it is misused then that needs to stop,” Killebrew said.
Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City, said in a text message she thinks “as governing principles legislators should continue to protect trust fund dollars for the specific purpose they were created. That being said, I also think it’s important that Florida continue to balance its budget in a responsible way and not ask for more money from Florida’s families to feed the appetite of politicians who want to spend money hand over fist.”
State Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, and Rep. Colleen Burton, R-Lakeland could not be reached for comment.
The money from the trust goes to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, which then distributes 70 percent of the funds to State Housing Initiatives Partnership, which provides money for housing programs in all 67 counties in the state and larger cities. Thirty percent of the funds are for other programs, such as the State Apartment Incentive Loan program.
Nearly one million very low income Floridians pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing, according to the 2017 Home Matters report from the Florida Housing Coalition.
That money from the trust fund could help someone who is living paycheck to paycheck, said Laura Lee Gwinn, executive director of the Homeless Coalition of Polk County.
“People may be employed full time but trying to find an apartment or rental in decent shape that they can afford is really hard and getting harder,” Gwinn said.
Article last accessed here on September 21, 2018. A print-ready version is available here.