Florida addressed the needs for affordable housing very well in 1992 by creating the Sadowski Fund.
Funded through stamp tax fees from real estate deals, the Sadowski includes two trust funds.
Seventy percent of the money in the Sadowski fund goes to local housing assistance known as SHIP and the other 30 percent goes into a state housing trust fund known as SAIL. SHIP helps homeowners with down payment, repairs or preservation and rental assistance while SAIL goes to developers to help build more affordable housing.
Unfortunately, starting in 2002 under the Jeb Bushadministration, the Legislature started raiding this fund for general fund purposes. Over the last 20 years, $2 billion have been taken out of this fund. Since the money was leveraged 6 to 1 the loss to Affordable Housing is far greater than just the $2 billion.
Last year, the Legislature finally agreed to leave the money in the Fund and not raid it anymore. But there is only $362 million left in the fund, not enough to address the affordable houses crisis in Florida.
The Florida Senate has proposed legislation to offer incentives to Developers to build affordable housing and hoping that it will trickle down to the people actually in need. This is the same principle that President Reagan proposed for tax cuts to the wealthy hoping they would trickle down to the poor. This kind of assistance will not work at this stage.
The solution remains in building up the Sadowski Fund to make up for the losses over the last 20 years but the Legislature is not looking to provide the funds directly for housing assistance. The situation is not going to improve with the current efforts and we are going to start losing population in Florida, because people simply cannot afford to live here.
I predict that the population decline will start within three years and it will become very obvious in five years.
Ash Marwah is a resident of The Villages.