3 – From The Editor

4 – Florida Needs Affordable Housing Now, More Than Ever: The Data

5 – SHIP Distribution Estimates 2013-14

6 – Sadowski State and Local Housing Trust Funds Help People with Disabilities

8 – SHIP is Needed in Today’s Housing Market

9 – How are Florida’s State and Local Housing Programs Funded

10 – Member Spotlight – Keystone Challenge Fund SHIP Means Stability for Families and The Economy

12 – Member Spotlight – Tampa Bay CDC SHIP Has A Proven Track Record of Success

14 – SHIP Matches the Right Recipient with the Right Amount of Assistance

16 – Member Spotlight – Related Urban Development Group – State and Local Housing Trust Funds Provide Critically Needed Rental Housing

18 – Member Spotlight – Community Land Trust of Palm Beach County – Davis Landings

20 – Habitat for Humanity of Florida Urges the Legislature to Use SHIP Funds for SHIP

21 – Closing the Section 196.1978 Statutory Loophole

22 – NSP Expenditure Deadlines and Closeout Roll Forward

25 – Capacity Corner: Grant Writing Tips for Nonprofits

26 – Federal Housing Programs Suffer as Budget Lurches from Crisis to Crisis

27 – The Viridian-Sadowski Funds Aid in Preservation of Affordable Housing

28 – Saving Project-Based Section 8 Housing

30 – FHC Consulting Services

31 – CDBG, HOME, and CHDO Workshop Facilitation

32 – SHIP Clips

34 – 2013 FHC Annual Conference

From The Editor

Heading into the 2013 legislative session things are looking good. No budget deficit. A recovering economy that has generated an estimated $204.81 million in Sadowski state and local housing trust funds ($53.40 million for state programs like SAIL, and $151.41 million for SHIP) and an Attorney General settlement that has generated an additional $200 million in bank settlement funds to be appropriated for housing related activities in the FY 2013-14 session.

Housing advocates are weary from four years of near total sweeps of the housing trust fund monies. SHIP programs around the state have long waiting lists for funds yet to be received. Without a budget deficit, this is the year for SHIP and SAIL to be fully funded.

The Florida Legislature has a constitutional obligation to pass a balanced budget. So when the Legislature swept housing trust funds to general revenue during years of budget deficits, we didn’t like it, but there was a rationale. But when there is no such deficit? Using tax dollars in accordance with the purpose for which they are raised is the fiscally responsible course of governing. When the documentary stamp tax was raised in 1992, with the adoption of the William E. Sadowski Affordable Housing Act, it was for the express purpose of funding the state and local housing trust funds. Would the industry groups such as the Florida Realtors and Florida Home Builders Association have agreed to an increase in the documentary stamp tax to fund general revenue? Of course not. Not only did the Florida Realtors and Florida Home Builders Association agree to an increase in the documentary stamp tax, they actively supported it. They supported the tax because it came with a statutory promise that those monies would be used to produce and preserve affordable housing in Florida. When the monies deposited into the state and local housing trust fund accounts are swept into general revenue it is the equivalent of having raised the documentary stamp tax to fund general revenue. Again, something the industry groups such as the Florida Realtors and Florida Home Builders Association would not have supported.

So, in legislative session 2013, let’s encourage and expect our elected officials to use the housing trust funds for housing. It’s time.

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1 – Housing, Hurricanes, and the Fight for Funding Begins

3 – Public Housing Authorities and Other Housing Advocates Spent the Year Fighting to Preserve Full Funding for Section 8 Housing Vouchers

5 – Federal Surplus Property for the Homeless: An Opportunity Advocates Should Not Miss

9 – Hurricanes and Manufactured Housing

11 – Hurricanes and Housing Assistance

12 – Affordable Housing Study Commission Recovery Recommendations

14 – 2004 Conference Highlights

16 – San Jose Mission

17 – DCA Revises Fiscal Impact Model: Affordable Housing is Treated as “Infrastructure – Like”

19 – Increasing Community-Based Affordable Housing Opportunities for People with Disabilities

22 – Art in Architecture

26 – SHIP Clips

30 – Resources for Financial Literacy and Homebuyer Education

Housing, Hurricanes, and the Fight for Funding Begins

With over 545 conference registrants, the Florida Housing Coalition’s 17th Annual Conference, held in Tampa, Sept. 20-22nd was fortunate to have come off sandwiched between hurricanes and tropical storms. Forty registrants were unable to attend, because they were hard hit from hurricane devastation to their homes or offices. We missed them all, especially a few folks like long time board member Dan Horvath from CEII, and Florida Housing Coalition Partners for Better Housing; Janice Boone from AmSouth and Deanna Lewis from SunTrust, all regular conference participants.

The Conference was a huge success–from the public policy plenary with a panel of national experts debating “Home Ownership… Is it for Everyone,” the success stories across the state, the keynote by Darren Walker of the Rockefeller Foundation, bus tours of housing success stories in St. Petersburg and Tampa, in- depth workshops, and roundtables for SHIP Administrators and Public Housing Authorities. The devastation from hurricanes and storms and the effect it has had on low-income families in Florida was abuzz.

In my opening comments at the conference, I stated: “If there is one silver lining that we can find in these storm clouds, it is that there should be no question that we should not have to fight too hard to get full funding from the Sadowski Act state and local housing trust funds in 2005.”

But no sooner than that was said, the fight for full funding has definitely begun. The Sadowski Act Coalition is presently meeting to ensure that we do not see a repeat of last year’s diversion of more than 50% of our dedicated affordable housing dollars from the state and local housing trust funds in FY 2005-06. Advocates are also making a strong argument for recovering the $221 million we lost in 2004-05 to assist the thousands of low income hurricane disaster victims in Florida. Conference and hurricane coverage continues on pages 9 through 14. Many thanks to all of you who attended the 2004 Conference. We look forward to seeing you all again at next year’s statewide conference in Orlando, Sept. 12th-14th, 2005.

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1 – Recommendations of the Hurricane Housing Work Group

4 – 2005 Legislative Session: A Message from the Florida Housing Coalition

5 – Housing Costs Increase Outpaces Income

7 – Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Funding Saga Continues Through FY 2005 and FY 2006 Budgets

9 – Balanced Residential Communities: Including Affordable Housing in Smart Growth and New Urbanist Development

13 – Demonstration Project Offers People with Disabilities More Housing Freedom

14 – Historic Buildings: A Powerful Tool for Addressing the Nation’s Housing Crisis

16 – Demographics: Illuminating the Path or Just Another Three-Ring Circus?

21 – Resources for Financial Literacy and Homebuyer Education

24 – Creating Inclusive Communities in Florida Revised and Reprinted

25 – Resource Information on Mortgage Products

26 – SHIP Clips

28 – Coalition News

Recommendations of the Hurricane Housing Work Group

The four hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004 damaged more than 700,000 homes. For many of the affected Floridians, the markets will respond naturally to meet the housing needs that the storms created. Those families had appropriate levels of insurance and are able to pay for or finance the necessary repairs or rebuilding efforts, or they can find suitable and affordable replacement housing.

For many other Floridians, often the elderly, people with disabilities, and the poor, the markets will require additional incentives to respond. More than 15,000 Florida families are living in travel trailers and mobile homes that FEMA has provided, roughly 400,000 of those affected by the hurricanes have annual incomes below $30,000, and the housing stock that served the state’s elderly population suffered disproportionate levels of damage.

As part of Florida’s response, Governor Jeb Bush and I have recommended that the Florida Legislature appropriate $354.4 million in one-time hurricane housing recovery funds, above and beyond the $192.9 million in recurring state affordable housing funds that we have recommended in the traditional Florida programs, and above and beyond the supplemental $100.9 million in disaster recovery CDBG funds that the Department of Community Affairs will start to distribute soon. To recommend the most effective ways to leverage these one-time hurricane housing funds to best help the markets respond, Governor Bush created the Hurricane Housing Work Group and asked me to serve as its chair.

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1 – The CLT Model-A Tool for Permanently Affordable Housing and Wealth Generation

3 – 2005 Legislative Update

8 – The Florida Community Land Trust Institute

11 – Green Building

12 – Revised and Reprinted Inclusive Communities

13 – How Public Housing Agencies Are Coping With Dwindling Subsidies

15 – Housing Authorities and Advocates Must Join Together to Fight for Housing Assistance for the Most Needy

16 – Success Story – Preserving Affordable Housing: The Success Story of Villa Maria

18 – Revitalizing a Winter Park Neighborhood: Success Story of Hannibal Square Community Land Trust

20 – Affordable Housing Study Commission Examines Preservation Issues

21 – Preserving Mobile Home Parks: Don’t Forget “Who Brought You To The Dance”

23 – 2005 Conference Highlights

28 – SHIP Clips

The CLT Model: A Tool for Permanently Affordable Housing and Wealth Generation

The gap between wealth and poverty is growing in the U.S., because policies to stabilize the lives of the poor and people of color do not focus on long-term solutions. Our economy is unstable, in an inflationary spiral that continues to raise the cost of basic goods, including food, gasoline, medicine and health care. Most depressing is the lack of affordable housing for the poor, working and unemployed, and seniors with limited retirement income. The severity of the shortage of affordable housing has multiplied in recent years. Barbara Ehrenreich demonstrated the stark reality of the situation facing low-income wage earners in her book Nickel and Dimed in America. She found from personal experience that in today’s America, two incomes are required in order to live “indoors,” let alone reside in safe, adequate housing. Insufficient affordable housing is being developed to fulfill the need, and most that is developed remains affordable only during the terms of the initial financing, due to relatively short-term subsidies, after which time it reverts to market rates. As a result, over the longer term, public affordable housing resources actually aid gentrification, eventually displacing the very people they were meant to assist.

The CLT Model
Thirty-eight years ago, Bob Swann and Ralph Borsodi developed the Community Land Trust model, arising from their concerns related to poverty and land tenure. The model, drawn from the Indian gramdan land reform movement, was conceived as a democraticallycontrolled institution that would hold land for the common good of any community, while making it available to individuals within the community through long-term leases. Over the years, the model has evolved and been applied primarily to the development of permanently affordable housing within intentional communities and more broadly in urban, suburban and rural communities across the country. Terms within the ground lease balance community interests with those of the individual, providing an opportunity for lower-income people to earn equity, while limiting appreciation to ensure affordability for future lower income homebuyers.

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1 – Housing Florida’s Workforce, Past, Present, and Future: 2006 Legislative Session

5 – KATRINA, RITA, WILMA, GAMMA . . . and Saving Our Region’s Affordable Housing

7 – Shared Appreciation: Balancing Wealth Building with Future Community Needs

9 – Green Communities

11 – Preservation of Multifamily Affordable Housing: The Focus of Affordable Housing Study Commission’s 2005 Final Report

13 – Community Land Trusts: Creating Permanent Affordable Homeownership in Florida’s High Cost Areas Title and Tax Issues

16 – The Florida Community Land Trust Institute

17 – The Obligations of the Community Land Trust to the Homebuyer

19 – FHFC and Local Government Funding to Facilitate Community Land Trusts in Florida

21 – Preserving Mobile Home Parks for the Residents Who Live There

24 – SHIP Clips

26 – 2005 Conference Highlights

29 – Kelo v. City of New London: Eminent Domain and Affordable Housing

From The Editor

Florida can boast the best housing trust fund in the nation. But we are steadily and quickly losing ground in the fight for first-time home ownership, housing our essential first-responder workforce, and providing for our most vulnerable citizens.

WHY? Because in this time of hyper-appreciation (see map on page 3), our state and local housing trust funds dedicated to providing affordable housing, have either been used for other purposes or simply not appropriated for any purpose. It is stunningly inexcusable.

The Florida Housing Coalition’s Annual Conference attracts more than 600 affordable housing advocates, lenders, builders, administrators and policy makers to share ideas and learn from each other. The Annual Conference offers FHC members an opportunity to mingle with experts in the field from diverse organizations. Join us as newcomers and affordable housing veterans engage in thought-provoking exchange of new ideas, demonstrated techniques, and invaluable training and networking.

Conference registration will open early June.

Hotel reservations can be made online today!

Orlando Guide

Orlando offers a vibrant nightlife, great food, theme parks and much more for attendees to do while not attending Conference sessions. Check out all that is available.

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1 – What Happened to Housing in the 2006 Session?

7 – Setting SAIL to Meet the Needs of Florida’s Lowest Income Renters

9 – 19th Annual Statewide Conference

10 – Coming Soon: Florida’s Priced Out Report

11 – The Widening Gap Between What Houses Cost and What Families Can Afford

14 – Eminent Domain Reform in the 2006 Legislative Session: Florida’s Explosive Reaction to the Kelo Decision

15 – Politics and Policy: How Eminent Domain Practices can Shape or Destroy a Desired Future

19 – A Success Story for Displaced Mobile Home Park Residents

21 – Lessons from Florida 2004, with Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Jeanne

25 – Florida Housing Coalition to Assist New Orleans Nonprofit: Sharing in the Initiative

27 – The Florida Housing Coalition Recognizes Kathleen McLeroy for Extraordinary Pro bono Assistance

28 – SHIP Clips

30 – The Florida Community Land Trust Institute

From The Editor

Was it a good session? Was it a bad session? It was the session that we should have seen all the money in the state and local housing trust funds appropriated for affordable housing. That did not happen. In fact less than half of the monies which should and could have been used to fund our existing programs such as SHIP and SAIL will be made available. The rest will remain sitting in the trust funds unable to benefit affordable housing production- a truly inexplicable outcome at a time of unprecedented housing crisis coupled with unprecedented surplus of general revenue and a state and local housing trust fund holding approximately $940 million.

The good news is twofold: the monies left unappropriated (approximately $507 million) was not spent for other purposes, so it will be available to be used for affordable housing programs in the 2007 session, and the affordable housing crisis is certainly on every legislator’s radar screen.