FHC Highlighted By National Low Income Housing Coalition

FHC Takes on New Advocacy Role, Continues Community Land Trust Work

The Florida Housing Coalition, Inc. (FHC), an NLIHC state partner, has been in the business of providing training and technical assistance to Florida’s nonprofits and their partners since 1982. Its role as an advocate has been limited for the last decade to the dedicated state and local housing trust funds (Sadowski Act). But with overwhelming evidence that the interests of nonprofits and the extremely low income need a collective voice, the FHC board voted at its April 2010 board meeting to again take on an expanded advocacy role.

The Florida Housing Coalition’s expansion of its role as advocate at the state level began immediately, with the Coalition calling upon the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, the state’s housing finance agency, to use all or most of its tax credit allocation for the preservation of Section 8 project-based developments.

In addition, to help inform the advocacy positions taken by the coalition, FHC is launching the Florida Nonprofit Housing Advocates Network at its statewide annual conference in September, during a joint roundtable with the Florida Community Land Trust Institute (CLT I). While the form the Network will take is still to be determined, it will offer FHC members the opportunity to participate in and inform FHC’s state-level advocacy.

“The Florida Nonprofit Housing Advocates Network will promote our goal of increasing the capacity of nonprofits to develop and preserve affordable housing and to ensure that there is at least one community based organization in every community,” FHC President Jaimie Ross said.

FHC is also continuing its highly successful work on community land trusts, on which the Coalition works in partnership with 1000 Friends of Florida under the umbrella of the Florida Community Land Trust Institute. A CLT is a nonprofit organization that acquires and holds land on which affordable housing is built. In a CLT arrangement, the nonprofit transfers to a family the title to the house, while retaining ownership of the land. When the family sells, the resale value of the home is restricted and the home must be sold to a low income family. By separating the value of the land from the value of the home and by limiting the equity families can build in the home, a CLT offers a way to provide a permanent stock of housing affordable to people with low incomes.

The CLT I was launched in January of 2000 to assist in the development of community land trusts in Florida through training and technical assistance, and policy work. The Institute has been extraordinarily successful on both fronts. Florida leads the nation in community land trusts and in 2009 passed legislation to provide tax relief to community land trusts.

An obstacle faced by the CLT was the uneven assessment of CLTs throughout the state. Prior to the new legislation, some property appraisers would not take into consideration the restricted value of the home, and would assess a CLT property at an inflated level. With the help of Representative Keith Fitzgerald (D), who championed this legislation for three years until it passed, Florida CLTs can now expect a tax bill based on the resale-restricted value of the property and can pass that savings to the low income homeowner.

Since its launch, the Florida CLT I has supported the creation of more than 25 community land trusts in Florida. There are now so many CLTs in Florida that in Palm Beach there is even a consortium of six community land trusts, Ms. Ross said. FHC provides training and technical assistance to the CLTs in Florida, and has been promoting the use of CLTs in conjunction with Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funds. The Coalition is providing NSP training and technical assistance throughout Florida.

For more information: Jaimie Ross, President, Florida Housing Coalition, and Affordable Housing Director, 1000 Friends of Florida, jaimieross@aol.com, www.flhousing.org.

Read the entire NLIHC member outreach.