Name: DeSantis veto of $225M affordable housing program is ‘a huge hit,’ Orange County says
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DeSantis veto of $225M affordable housing program is ‘a huge hit,’ Orange County says

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AdvertisementBy Orlando SentinelJul 06, 2020 at 8:13 amIn cutting $1 billion from Florida’s budget, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ red pen also wiped out funding for one of the state’s decades-old affordable housing programs.The entire $225 million previously allocated by the Legislature for the State Housing Initiatives Partnership, also known as SHIP, was vetoed, moving the money back into the Sadowski trust fund until legislators convene again.AdvertisementMitchell Glasser, manager of Orange County’s housing and community development division, said the county was expecting $11.7 million in SHIP funds this year, compared with the past two years when it only received about $1.4 million.For the most part, the county uses SHIP for down payment assistance and housing repairs for very low income to moderate income families. It also goes to low-interest loans for developers to build affordable apartments and to support special needs housing.AdvertisementGlasser said he had planned to use the money to establish new programs focused on rehousing the homeless and providing loans to nonprofits that build affordable units. The county has about $4 million leftover from previous SHIP allocations, but some programs might need to be reconsidered.“It’s a huge hit,” Glasser said.In a seeming effort to replace the money, DeSantis on June 25 announced an additional $240 million from the federal CARES Act for rental and mortgage assistance. Half of that money will go to affordable multi-family properties that get funding from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation and the other half to counties based in part on how severe unemployment remains.Trey Price, executive director of FHFC, supported DeSantis’ decision to disburse additional CARES Act money, saying it will go out to residents and families who need it more quickly than SHIP would have. Funding from the CARES Act must be spent by the end of the year, where funding from SHIP likely wouldn’t be distributed until fall.“It’s going to be doing what we had hoped SHIP would be doing this year anyway,” Price said, explaining that during the coronavirus pandemic, the SHIP program also could have been used for rental and mortgage assistance.He added: “I think under these trying times and considering what the pandemic has done to the state budget, I think housing has made out incredibly well. I think it’s a win for housing ... that the governor has kept housing at or near the top of his concerns and it certainly shows with the CARES Act allocation.”Jaimie Ross, president of the Florida Housing Coalition, agreed that “now is the time to focus on deploying the CARES Act funds.”Also, other affordable housing programs were kept intact, including $115 million for the State Apartment Incentive Loan program, or SAIL, which provides low-interest loans to affordable housing developers.AdvertisementGlasser, however, said the short-term emergency assistance the CARES money will provide has “nothing to do with” the annual projects counties pay for with SHIP.Other housing groups, including Organize Florida and the Florida Housing Justice Alliance that have been pushing for more protections for renters, criticized the move to not deploy badly needed SHIP funds.Ida Eskamani, a lobbyist for Organize Florida, said it fits the saying, “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”“It’s infuriating that we’re balancing the budget on the backs of folks who need affordable housing, and it’s very disingenuous to say that the CARES Act is supplementing the dollars stolen from the Sadowski fund,” Eskamani said.Eskamani pointed to the more than $500 million in corporate tax breaks that were kept in the budget that she said should have been cut instead to make up for the revenue the state has lost during the pandemic.WeeklyA weekly update on health news in Florida. &gt; Before the pandemic hit, this appeared to be the first time in more than a decade that the state wasn’t going to sweep the affordable housing fund that for years has been used for unrelated projects. It’s possible it could be gobbled up later this year to offset the massive hit Florida’s budget has taken because of the economic fallout from the virus.AdvertisementDeSantis said that with the vetoes he made, Florida will have a $6.3 billion buffer to absorb revenue losses and “weather any storm that the economic recovery may throw our way going forward.”Andrew Aurand, vice president for research with the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which has been tracking local rental assistance programs, said seeing how quickly some areas are exhausting funds illustrates the enormous need for programs like SHIP.In Florida, NLIHC estimates that $609 million a month is needed to help low-income renters who were already spending at least a third of their income on rent and who have lost their jobs because of the virus. To provide enough in rental assistance funds for low-income renters across the country would cost $9.9 billion. The Urban Institute estimates even higher, $16 billion per month.The CARES Act provided some relief for renters. Orange County, for instance, received $36.5 million it set aside for rental and mortgage grants. The HEROES Act passed by the House would provide another $100 billion for rental assistance and $75 billion to help homeowners, but Senate Republicans have said they will not support the proposal.“I think the concern would be, we know that those SHIP funds are still going to be extremely important in the fall,” Aurand said, “and they really should not be swept away to fill other areas of the state budget.”Email the reporter at and follow on Twitter . Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Orlando SentinelJul 06, 2020 at 8:13 amIn cutting $1 billion from Florida’s budget, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ red pen also wiped out funding for one of the state’s decades-old affordable housing programs.The entire $225 million previously allocated by the Legislature for the State Housing Initiatives Partnership, also known as SHIP, was vetoed, moving the money back into the Sadowski trust fund until legislators convene again.AdvertisementMitchell Glasser, manager of Orange County’s housing and community development division, said the county was expecting $11.7 million in SHIP...

DeSantis veto of $225M affordable housing program is ‘a huge hit,’ Orange County says

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