This week’s guest on The Big Five talks about the importance of the Sadowski Fund for Florida’s families. Meet Jaimie Ross, President and CEO of the Florida Housing Coalition.
Please tell readers about yourself and your expertise in regards to affordable housing.
I am the president and CEO for the Florida Housing Coalition, a statewide nonprofit organization that has been providing training and technical assistance to Florida’s governments, nonprofits, and their partners to produce and preserve housing that’s affordable for over 30 years. The Florida Housing Coalition helps with everything from ending homelessness to first time homeownership, as well as creative solutions for affordable housing such as repurposing closed commercial centers for mixed use housing developments and creating community land trusts. I am a land use and real property lawyer practicing in the public interest since 1991. I worked for 24 years as the Affordable Housing Director at 1000 Friends of Florida under a grant contract from the Florida Bar Foundation.
Why was the Sadowski Fund established, and was it a bipartisan effort?
The William E. Sadowski Affordable Housing Act was passed in 1992. It created a dedicated revenue source for affordable housing by increasing the documentary stamp tax and redirecting doc stamp funds to two trust funds: the state housing trust fund and the local government housing trust fund. The Act passed with bipartisan support and was championed by industry groups such as the Florida Realtors and the Florida Home Builders Association. It was established to help build and retrofit homes, both for homeownership and for rent, to help Florida’s families to become first-time home buyers, to provide emergency repairs to homes for seniors and vulnerable populations It was also established to give local governments a funding source to meet the housing elements of their comprehensive plans, which requires every jurisdiction to meet all its current and anticipated housing needs.
HB 5401 and SB 2512 will potentially sweep 2/3rds of the funds slated for affordable housing to other projects, namely sea level rise and storm water (both huge issues in their own rights for the future of Florida). What impact will the loss of these funds have on families in Florida now and in the future?
This pair of bills seeks to make this sweep of two-thirds of the Sadowski housing trust funds permanent. Without a sweep this year, the Sadowski Trust Funds would deliver $423.3 million for affordable housing throughout the state. Using these funds for housing would generate, in one year alone, over 33,000 jobs, $4.9 billion in total positive economic benefit, over 47,000 people housed, and over 19,000 homes built, rehabilitated, or purchased. If you consider that two-thirds of this will be lost in just one year, you can see that this permanent sweep will slash the number of families in Florida that can be helped year after year. More of Florida’s families will be locked out and more of Florida’s families will fall into homelessness.
Is there a reasonable number that can be diverted from the Sadowski Fund that would appease legislators but NOT have a detrimental effect on those being served by SHIP and other programs?
I’m not able to know what would appease legislators but I do know that any Sadowski funds that are diverted will have a detrimental effect on the people who will be turned away. When housing funds are diverted, there is an actual person or a real family that suffers the consequence. When people don’t get housing and people fall into homelessness, it has a detrimental effect on all of us.
Who does the Sadowski Fund help, and what are the long-term benefits of it to communities?
The state housing trust fund is primarily used for the State Apartment Incentive Loan Fund, which is usually referred to as SAIL. These funds are used to fill the development cost gap between mortgage revenue bonds and what it costs to build an apartment complex. The long term benefits to communities is that SAIL funded apartments are well built, energy efficient apartments, typically located close to services and with a variety of resident amenities that serve the workforce. The State portion is 30% of the Sadowski funding.
Seventy percent of the funds go to the State Housing Initiatives Partnership Program, which is referred to as SHIP. This program helps renters and homeowners. It provides emergency repairs, like fixing roofs or whatever else might need to be repaired so that homeowners, very often seniors on fixed incomes, can remain safely housed.
SHIP also provides down payment and closing cost assistance to help Florida’s families become homeowners. In nearly every instance, the families that get into homeownership with SHIP funds are paying less in fixed- rate mortgage payments than they were in rent are therefore able to build wealth and meet their families’ needs. SHIP is also used for retrofits for people with disabilities to keep them stably housed and for hardening homes to withstand natural disasters. There is really no end to what SHIP can do to provide long-term benefits to the community. It’s an investment that helps the household directly, but also the entire local economy.
