Sadowski Act | Housing Leadership Council

Florida Realtors wages battle with DeSantis over state cuts to affordable housing fund

July 19, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

Florida Realtors, the state’s largest trade organization and the third-largest Realtor organization in the country, is taking on Gov. Ron DeSantis and state GOP lawmakers over recent legislation that permanently pillages a critical affordable housing trust fund.

The move comes as the prices of homes — and rents — skyrocket across Florida. The surge in costs has aggravated a chronic problem in the state: many lower- and middle-income residents cannot afford the cost of housing. On top of that, state leaders again this year siphoned away dollars from a pot of money specifically created to help ease the home price crunch.

Supported by the state’s Republican-led Legislature, DeSantis in June signed a bill to divert permanently half of Florida’s affordable housing trust fund — called the Sadowski fund — to pay for wastewater systems and sea level rise projects.

Not OK, said Florida Realtors, which boasts more than 200,000 members. Beginning June 28, the group kicked off a ballot initiative to override DeSantis’ bill and protect the housing fund from ever being swept again.

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Lawmakers Shortchange Housing Fund to Fight Sea-Level Rise

April 16, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

By the Miami Herald Editorial Board | April 14, 2021

Republicans are gutting Florida’s housing fund again. Gov. DeSantis should stop them

Florida lawmakers have been raiding the state’s affordable housing fund for so long, they’ve decided to drop the pretense and alter the law to fit their own twisted reasoning.

That’s what’s happening in Tallahassee now, where legislators have been siphoning money from the state’s housing trust fund to pay for other budget items for 18 years, housing advocates say. Lawmakers passed a bill last week that, if Gov. Ron DeSantis signs it, will permanently enshrine those shoddy actions into law.

And in a year when the state is set to get $10 billion in COVID money from the feds and an unexpected $2 billion in state taxes, that change is not only wrong, it’s unnecessary.

The trust fund money comes from a tax on real-estate transactions. Under Senate Bill 2512, money previously slated for affordable housing will now be divided three ways: for sea-level rise, for wastewater issues such as septic-to-sewer conversions and for affordable-housing programs. Affordable housing gets just 9 percent of the money.

Flooding and pollution definitely are important issues that need to be tackled in a serious way. Just not this way.

Created in 1992

The proposed law is also supposed to — finally — stop the Legislature’s longstanding practice of “sweeping” affordable-housing money into the general fund whenever there’s a budgetary hole. That’s nice, but it doesn’t change the fact that much of the affordable-housing trust fund will be spent elsewhere.

It was the Legislature that created this trust fund back in 1992, passing the William E. Sadowski Affordable Housing Act after Sadowski — a Miami lawyer, legislator and Department of Community Affairs chief known for his fair dealings and a willingness to talk things out — died in a state plane crash that year at age 48.

His 16-point creed for legislative service, written in the 1980s for freshman lawmakers, included such mind-blowing concepts (in today’s world) as serving all of the people and respecting opposing viewpoints.

DeSantis has tried to honor the state’s original commitment, at least on paper. Twice in his proposed budget, he has included full funding for affordable housing — about $423 million this year, which housing advocates say could generate $4.9 billion in economic benefits and create 33,000 jobs.

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FL Legislature approves major cuts in dollars for affordable housing, amid COVID-19 and housing crisis

April 9, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

By Issac Morgan April 9, 2021

Residents from Florida’s most vulnerable populations rely on affordable housing programs to buy a home, pay rent, and afford costly home repairs and construction.

But those programs are now threatened by state lawmakers who have pushed to permanently cut a significant chunk of money for the state’s affordable housing fund. Those dollars come from documentary stamp revenues.

The legislation titled SB 2512, which reduces the percentage for the pot of money that goes into affordable housing, is headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for his consideration.

The governor in January had recommended $423.3 million for such housing programs. But the legislation approved Thursday would be far lower than DeSantis’ proposal.

According to the Florida Housing Coalition, lawmakers have been pulling money out for 18 years from what’s called the Sadowski Trust Funds, named after the late William Sadowski, a former agency secretary in Florida government.

The funds swept over years have resulted in “a shortage of more than 344,000 affordable homes for lower-income Floridians,” according to the housing coalition.

Affordable housing programs oftentimes are geared toward seniors, veterans, those with disabilities and low-income workers, according to the coalition. Housing trust funds are used for construction of new affordable apartments, repairing older homes and helping first-time home buyers purchase a house.

The Florida Senate agreed Wednesday to funnel $200 million to affordable housing – up from nearly $140 million in the original SB 2512 bill. The changes came from State Sen. Ben Albritton, a Republican member of the Committee on Appropriations. He represents DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Highlands and Okeechobee counties, and parts of Charlotte, Lee and Polk counties.

Albritton increased the dollars by boosting the percentage of money that goes into the affordable housing fund.

However, the legislation had already reduced the percentages significantly, which likely means… Read More.

Raiding Sadowski fund robs Florida’s future

April 5, 2021 by Housing Leadership Council

By Elliott Johnson | The Palm Beach Post | March 31, 2021

Florida’s population continues to grow. According to a recent report by the Demographic Estimating Conference, Florida will be home to more than 300,000 additional residents per year, every year, for the next five years.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce calculates that we could be home to nearly 26 million residents by 2030— only nine years away. That’s larger than the current population of Australia.

This increase in population will further tax our capacity to increase an already strained supply of housing in all of our communities, pushing prices to stratospheric levels now seen in states like California, high-density metro areas like New York and Boston, or other areas in the United States that many Floridians used to call home. We’ll see more congestion and challenges to residents’ quality of life.

It is imperative that we implement good policy now to ensure some control over this future inevitability. Some of the tools we need already exist. Almost 30 years ago, the Florida Home Builders Association, Florida Realtors and Florida Legislature, seeing the need for locally focused housing solutions to address persistent and systemic problems for which funding would be difficult to obtain, crafted and passed the Sadowski Act.

Included was the establishment of the Florida State and Local Housing Trust Fund, which structured a levy on residential real estate sales. The money was intended to be mostly returned to donor counties and municipalities for targeted, maximally leveraged efforts to help address some of the persistent challenges identified by local community and business leaders.

Since then, Sadowski, and the Florida State and Local Housing Trust Fund have enjoyed broad and enthusiastic, support across all party lines. Although the fund, unfortunately, has been swept regularly to support the Florida General Revenue Fund, criticism of the housing fund’s intent and need is rare.

Under the trust fund’s rules, all counties and municipalities receiving Sadowski funding must have and implement unique Local Housing Assistance Plans (LHAPs), targeted to meet the special needs of the communities for which their LHAP is designed. Although many common elements may exist, each recipient has different specific needs, and local agencies provide better-targeted spending to address those needs.

For example, if a municipality’s LHAP calls for the mitigation and treatment of contaminated groundwater, in part by replacing old septic tanks with more modern systems to enhance access to affordable housing, that municipality can use the funds accordingly. No other fund or financial resource directed to affordable housing has the flexibility and local targeting that Sadowski does.

Recently, a bill was introduced to sweep funds allocated to local governments through the Florida State and Housing Trust Fund, and instead apply them to two new state programs. Rather than having them addressed locally through the existing Sadowski format, the state would redirect two-thirds of local communities’ rightfully entitled funds to specific programs that would be addressed on a statewide basis.

According to Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor) and Senate President Wilton Simpson (R-Spring Hill), taking these much-needed, locally-targeted funds would be “restructured distribution” — interesting term.

“We…have a tendency to create programs that sound great, but which we don’t actually fund,” said Simpson in announcing the plan. But that, ironically, is just what this plan proposes — on two sides of the equation: first, by taking resources already promised to local governments for their locally targeted use, and second, by failing to find a separate funding source specifically for the new programs.

This is just plain wrong.

As business leaders, and residents of Florida, we depend on a robust, diverse economy with inclusion, opportunity and fair access to upward socio-economic mobility — the American Dream — to better provide the kind of resiliency and demand necessary to ensure our continued prosperity. Access to housing is essential to the health of our communities.

The Florida State and Local Housing Trust Fund is a well-designed and critical tool that we can employ at local levels to help maintain this access. Sadowski is supported by a large and diverse group of organizations: Florida Realtors, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Bankers Association, AARP, Florida Association of Counties, Florida League of Cities, Florida Home Builders Association, Florida Veterans Foundation, and the Florida Council of Catholic Bishops are only a few.

Our legislature must allow local governments to use these funds as they have been designed. The Sadowski Fund is critical in maximizing local communities’ contributions to Florida’s larger economic engine. As necessary and noble it may be to address flooding in Florida due to sea-level rise and to mitigate environmental damage caused by antiquated or improperly designed residential waste systems, both challenges receive funding from other sources. Neither issue should be used to excuse raiding the Florida State and Local Housing Trust Fund — yet again — to feed new programs by picking low-hanging fruit from the neighbor’s tree.

While efforts to stem the effects of flooding and the contamination of groundwater need to be funded, taking money from another essential program, promised and affirmed by previous legislatures — and supported by our current governor, Ron DeSantis — to local governments for a different use is a bad idea. Doing so fails the fund’s increasingly critical original goals and cheats all Floridians of a much-needed local resource in the battle to maintain the health of our communities.

Our lawmakers should honor the design and intent of everyone who established the Sadowski Fund, the hard-working professionals who seek to efficiently leverage these dollars to maximally benefit our communities, the families who increasingly struggle to find affordable space to call home and, ultimately, all citizens of Florida. Our economy works best when it works for everyone.

Florida Realtors wages battle with DeSantis over state cuts to affordable housing fund

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Lawmakers Shortchange Housing Fund to Fight Sea-Level Rise

Republicans are gutting Florida’s housing fund again. Gov. DeSantis should stop them

Created in 1992

READ FULL ARTICLE

FL Legislature approves major cuts in dollars for affordable housing, amid COVID-19 and housing crisis

However, the legislation had already reduced the percentages significantly, which likely means… Read More.

Raiding Sadowski fund robs Florida’s future

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