April 2017 Archives

EDITORIALS

Legislature should stop raiding affordable housing money

April 19, 2017 | Tampa Bay Times
Rents are soaring across Florida and the Tampa Bay area, hitting low-income households the hardest. The state has a dedicated fund to develop affordable workforce housing, but leaders in Tallahassee treat it like a piggy bank and raid it at will. The Legislature will be challenged to balance the state budget on lean revenues, but it should recognize the housing shortage as an urgent need that can’t be ignored.

The William E. Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust Fund is supported by documentary stamp taxes on real estate sales. The money, some $292 million this year alone, is supposed to be used to leverage private and federal funding to support state and local housing programs. But lawmakers have skimmed millions from the fund every year since the recession and redirected the money.
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As U.S. axes affordable housing, Florida dare not raid trust fund

April 4, 2017 | Sun Sentinel
It’s the best of times and — at least in one critical respect — the worst of times for South Florida’s economy. The region has seen strong job growth. But a chronic shortage of affordable housing in the tri-county area has been deepening.

In a study released this month by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area ranked tenth from the bottom in the supply of affordable housing for extremely low-income residents.
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OP-EDS & LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

April 18, 2017 | Orlando Sentinel
Orlando will soon have a new community down near Disney — the Four Seasons Private Residences — where home prices start around $5 million.

Bully for all our new neighbors … and the $24,514 in homeowner’s association fees they’ll pay each year.

Ironically, though, many of the people who already live here — the ones who work full-time in the tourist industry that attracts the Four Seasons folks — can’t afford homes of their own
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NEWS ARTICLES

Florida affordable housing funds likely to get shifted

April 28, 2017 | Orlando Sentinel
Florida’s 25-year-old solution to affordable housing — funding down-payment assistance and subsidized rentals with real estate taxes — operates with half the money it had a decade ago, even as Floridians are further stretched to pay the rent.

When the housing market peaked in 2006, 95 percent of the real estate sales taxes designated for affordable housing were spent as directed by a 1992 state act. But that share has dropped to 67 percent, according to the Florida Housing Coalition — and the program’s revenues have dwindled by more half during the last 10 years, from $433 million to $200 million.
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