Sadowski coalition looks to prevent affordable housing trust fund raid this year

By: Gray Rohrer

The Sadowski Housing Coalition, an association of business groups, charities and advocacy groups for the poor and elderly, is hoping to prevent a fourth straight year of heavy raids on the Florida’s affordable housing trust fund.

The Coalition unveiled its website Wednesday, and is hoping to reverse the recent trend of lawmakers using the fund to beef up the state’s general revenue. Supporters contend that full funding for affordable housing will help turn around Florida’s dismal real estate and construction sectors, creating 9,000 jobs and injecting $900 million into the economy.

“Our priority this year is funding; we hope this online resource will aid our membership organizations, supporters of affordable housing throughout the state and elected officials to understand that using housing trust fund dollars for housing creates approximately 9,000 jobs, $900 million in economic benefit and lessens future state budget deficits,” Sadowski coalition facilitator Jaime Ross said in a prepared statement.

Getting lawmakers to agree to full funding for affordable housing, however, could be a difficult task. When the economy began to tank in 2008 after the  the housing bubble burst, legislators turned to the affordable housing trust fund to supplement dwindling general revenue funds. In the past three years, $706.2 million (82 percent) of the affordable housing trust fund was swept into general revenue. This year, affordable housing programs in the state will get $37.5 million, or 8 percent of the total they received at their peak, in the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

As the bottom fell out of the housing market and home prices plummeted, lawmakers also saw less of a need for affordable housing. But the coalition is attempting to change that perception, contending that although there isn’t a great need for new construction in the state, old apartment buildings and abandoned foreclosed properties are in need of repair and rehabilitation, and home prices haven’t dropped far enough for the average working family.

“We’re trying to educate them [lawmakers], because it’s just not accurate, even today,” said Mark Hendrickson, who directed the state housing agency when the Sadowski Act creating the trust fund was passed in 1992. “If you have a house that was $500,000 and now it’s down to $200,000, how does that help out someone making $20,000 or $30,000 a year?”

That argument, however, could be a tough sell in a year when lawmakers are facing a potential $2.6 billion budget shortfall and Medicaid and education costs are rising. Where the affordable housing trust fund dollars go, however, is in the eye of the beholder, Hendrickson argued.

“If you like the sweep then you say it went to education; if you don’t like the sweep, it went to pet projects,” he said.

Meanwhile, the housing market remains flat. The Florida Association of Realtors released third quarter numbers Wednesday showing that home resales jumped 12 percent statewide compared with the same period last year, but the median sale price of $136,000 hardly budged, up just $100 from the 2010 third quarter. Statewide condo sales also rose 13 percent, moving the median sale price up to $89,600, an increase of 7 percent from last year.