Hope for affordable housing solutions

Chapters keep being added to the voluminous story behind the affordable housing topic. Like elsewhere across the country, Sarasota and Manatee counties and the region’s municipalities continue to struggle with the hot-button issue.

The latest chapter is being written by Dr. Ben Carson, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The subject came up at the annual meeting of the Sarasota Argus Foundation on Thursday at the Sarasota Yacht Club when the guest speaker, Denise Cleveland-Leggett, advanced some of Carson’s initiatives and outlined the difficulties.

“HUD has many challenges,” said HUD’s new Region IV regional administrator — not the least of which is the demand for affordable housing is outpacing the supply.

In July of last year, Carson appointed Cleveland-Leggett, a longtime public and private attorney, to the HUD post. She oversees HUD endeavors in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In 2008, HUD determined that the backlog of agency housing requests reached $25.6 billion, she said, adding, “Thousands and thousands of people are on waiting lists for a home.”

HUD compiled the number of the nation’s homeless in 2017, and found local counts totaled 553,742. Another statistic shows the depth of the problem: 5.5 million American low-income households receive HUD housing or rental assistance. The agency funneled $7 million into Sarasota over the past year, she said.

One solution lies in severing the generational cycle of poverty, Cleveland-Leggett said, echoing a common strategy around the nation. Here, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, United Way Suncoast, the Salvation Army and a host of other organizations and nonprofits are working on education programs, economic supports, and health and well-being initiatives to help children and their parents break the cycle of poverty.

Cleveland-Leggett cited one of Carson’s new drives called EnVision Centers. Launched in December, the program is designed to help HUD-assisted households achieve self-sufficiency. The centers, to be located on or near public housing developments, will cultivate four pillars of self-sufficiency: character and leadership, educational advancement, economic empowerment, and health and wellness. Public-private partnerships and resources will drive the process for maximum community impact.

“EnVision Centers treat the whole person,” Cleveland-Leggett told the Argus gathering of some 150 members and guests. The centers will “become a critical tool” in moving people out of public housing and transitioning them into home ownership, she said.

“While funding for HUD has increased over the last twenty years, the number of households served has remained the same,” Carson said at the time of the EnVision launch. “We need to think differently about how we can empower Americans to climb the ladder of success.”

The first center will be established in Detroit.

Cleveland-Leggett mentioned several other federal programs aimed at increasing the stock of affordable housing.

Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD, was created to hand public housing authorities a tool to preserve and improve public housing properties and address the $26 billion nationwide backlog of deferred maintenance. RAD allows public housing agencies to leverage public and private debt and equity in order to reinvest in the public housing stock.

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit, created in 1986, remains relevant by allowing agencies to issue tax credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation, or new construction of rental housing targeted to lower-income households. The program is the most important resource for creating affordable housing, HUD reports.

Cleveland-Leggett’s well-received speech aligns with the mission of the Argus Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in Sarasota in 1983. The foundation unites business leaders from diverse industries and leverages their talents and experience to benefit the community and facilitate communications between the public and private sectors. The organization states that it applies business leadership to identify, educate, advocate, and collaborate on solutions for important community issues that will enhance the quality of life, environment, and economic well-being of Sarasota County.

The organization currently has more than 170 members from 50 different industries.

At the luncheon, Jack Cox was introduced as the 2018 president of foundation.