Florida’s affordable housing fund is a frequent target for Republican lawmakers

TALLAHASSEE – The latest proposal by the Legislature’s Republican leaders to divert almost $300 million intended for affordable housing and spend it elsewhere fits a familiar pattern at the state Capitol.

Since the beginning of this century, there have only been five years when lawmakers left this pot of money alone – and allowed it to go where a 1992 law ordered it spent, on housing for lower-income Floridians.

Since 2000, GOP-led Legislatures and governors have agreed to pull more than $2.3 billion from the housing fund. While $4.4 billion has been used to help local governments build and repair housing and provide rental and mortgage assistance to Floridians, the demand far outstrips the dollars, supporters of the program say.

“I don’t think people realize that when it comes to the affordable housing crisis, one of our biggest problems is the lack of supply,” said Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat who condemned the latest proposal by House Speaker Chris Sprowls and Senate President Wilton Simpson to steer most of the program’s funding into other budget areas.

“We need a massive increase in housing infrastructure and it takes time, even when affordable housing money is there,” she added.

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Under Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, Florida lawmakers in 1992 agreed to boost the state tax on real estate transactions – the documentary stamp tax – to help pay for affordable housing subsidies. The move came after decades of rapid growth which turned Florida into a mega-state, with incomes still relatively low.

Florida still ranks in the bottom third of states for median household income – and did so even before the COVID-19 pandemic and tourism downturn, which hit the state’s lower-wage service industry jobs especially hard.

Since legislative actions of the past can’t bind future Legislatures, lawmakers have skirted the 1992 affordable housing measure almost annually. Just as Simpson and Sprowls are recommending this spring, lawmakers have reached into the affordable housing pot and pulled out cash for other programs.

But the demand for lower-cost housing continues to grow.

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Amid the pandemic, the housing market has boomed – helped by historically low interest rates. Real estate transactions have pumped more documentary stamp tax dollars into the affordable housing trust fund – making it an even fatter target for lawmakers.

But only some households are benefiting from the housing boom. While Florida had a housing shortage before the pandemic, Florida Realtors said in December that the inventory of single-family homes is down 44% from a year earlier.

Rents also are going up as home prices climb.

The same report by Florida Realtors shows that this lack of inventory has put an upward pressure on home prices – with the median sale price climbing to $309,000 in December, an increase of 14.4% statewide in just a year.

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport