Special to Realty/Builder Connection
When Florida lawmakers vote next legislative session on affordable housing measures, they will have the expertise of a House of Representatives panel to guide them.
House Speaker Allan Bense has appointed 10 members to the House Interim Workgroup on Affordable Housing. The bipartisan panel is charged with researching affordable housing issues to make recommendations to the 2007 legislative session.
And Bense appointed Rep. Mike Davis, R-Naples, to lead the committee. Northeast Florida will be represented by Jennifer Carroll, R-Green Cove Springs.
“To build upon the good work (Davis) did last session,” said Towson Fraser, communications director for Bense. “(Davis) did a phenomenal job. He took a hugely complex issue and got a lot done. There’s more that needs to be done and that’s why he chose him.”
Davis’ bill, HB1363, was the first major housing reform legislation to be signed into law in two decades. Among other things, it appropriated $433 million from Florida’s housing trust funds for affordable housing, including $50 million for Davis’ program, which provides financial incentives to public-private partnerships that find innovative solutions to the affordable housing shortage for service workers.
As Florida’s real estate prices skyrocketed during the past two years and wages failed to keep up, public and private employers alike began clamoring for solutions to the affordable housing crisis.
Under Davis’ leadership, lawmakers began addressing the issue in earnest last session.
However, even though the 2006 Legislature had nearly $940 million available for appropriation in the state housing trust funds, lawmakers only spent $433 million. The year before, they spent $10 million more than that. They are expected to have $1 billion in state funds to appropriate for the 2007 session.
One of the issues for the session, which begins in February, will be whether to remove the pending cap on the Sadowski Act Trust Fund, the fund generated by a tax on real estate documentary taxes. If the cap is not removed, it will limit to $243 million the amount of money going into the affordable housing trust fund beginning July 2007. Lawmakers in the 2005 session approved the cap, setting it to kick off next year. The fund has been receiving $500 million to $600 million from the tax, which a coalition of leaders from a broad spectrum of civic and business interests lobbied to get passed in 1992.
“The cap issue will be coming up. We are going to have to address that,” Davis said on Wednesday. Davis already has scheduled the first meeting of the task force for Sept. 20 in Tallahassee.
After that, he wants the location to move around the state, stopping in Jacksonville, Orlando, West Palm Beach and Southwest Florida.
“It will give us a variety of viewpoints. The whole world’s not like Naples,” Davis said, joking.
One of Davis’ top priorities is to tap the stakeholders around the state to find out what challenges they are facing. “I want to get everybody up to speed on the existing programs and what the issues are,” he said.
He expects to hear from industry leaders, housing advocates and anyone affected by Florida’s housing crisis.
“I think the preservation of affordable housing is important. We’ve lost a lot of affordable housing and we are trying to prevent more loss,” Davis said.
Bense, R-Panama City, noted that Florida’s families are continuing to have housing problems despite the recent commitment of resources.
“We have committed significant resources over the past decade to addressing housing problems facing low-income residents of Florida,” he said in a prepared statement. “However, due to increases in housing costs, many Florida families continue to face difficulties in obtaining safe and affordable housing.”
Other House members named to the panel are Carroll, Frank Attkisson, R-Kissimmee; Marti Coley, R-Mariana; Larry Cretul, R-Ocala; Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach; Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach; Richard Macheck, D-Delray Beach; Priscilla Taylor, D-West Palm Beach; Trey Traviesa, R-Tampa.