The Florida Association of Realtors is lobbying state lawmakers to use funding generated through the 1992 William E. Sadowski Act, which set aside a portion of documentary stamp taxes as a dedicated revenue source for workforce housing, for its intended purpose - helping Florida’s citizens become homeowners.
Since its inception, the Sadowski Act has helped more than 150,000 families in all 67 counties become homeowners and make emergency repairs. Revenue generated under this landmark legislation goes to state housing programs that provide downpayment assistance, low-interest loans and home rehabilitation funds for low-income residents and the teachers, firefighters and police officers that make up the fabric of our communities.
But not all of the money earmarked for Florida’s housing trust funds through the Sadowski Act actually goes to the state housing programs. Despite the fact that statewide median housing prices have increased 70 percent in the past five years, the Florida Legislature’s allocations to workforce housing have remained constant at approximately $193 million. Yet economists have estimated that doc stamp taxes could potentially contribute nearly $450 million to the state housing trust funds for fiscal 2005-2006. What happens to the difference? It goes into the state’s general revenue funds.
Instead of another tax, says FAR, the housing needs of families in Florida would be better served if appropriations to the state’s workforce housing programs reflected the doc stamp revenues that already are collected specifically for that purpose.
The outcry over last month’s defeat of HB 1221 by state Rep. Chris Smith (D-Fort Lauderdale) is all the more reason for lawmakers to allocate more of the monies collected for the state’s housing trust funds. HB 1221 would have substantially increased doc stamp taxes on commercial and industrial transactions in Broward and Palm Beach counties to raise an estimated $62 million for workforce housing programs in those two counties.
“No one supports affordable housing and homeownership efforts more than Florida Realtors,” says John Sebree, FAR’s vice president of public policy. “Realtors share Rep. Smith’s commitment to workforce housing. In fact, FAR was instrumental in the preservation of the Sadowski trust funds last year and we’re working to get the funding increased this year.
“With available monies in the housing trust funds, it is unnecessary to put the burden of funding workforce housing on the backs of certain businesses. Hundreds of millions in doc stamps are already being paid by property owners with the expectation that those funds are supposed to go to affordable housing — yet the money’s not going there.”