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For the past year, the Pinellas County Housing Finance Authority (PCHFA) has been providing financing solutions for affordable housing in Pinellas County, Florida. Since the beginning of 2017, more than 1,600 units of housing are fully financed.
Currently the agency is working with the state to fund $300,000 in capital projects to help people who need housing. The Pinellas County Housing Finance Authority has also committed itself to helping homeowners who don’t qualify for financing but need help paying for their homes in order to get rid of some of the burdens of home ownership.
Pinellas County is not alone in this. The State of Florida’s Office of Financial Management has said it will fund 250,000 homeowners annually. That’s enough to keep 80,000 people housed in a single year. That’s pretty good considering the region’s housing cost. Another 50,000 homes will be fixed-income or subsidized in affordable housing. That would be enough to keep the entire city of St.
county with no housing.
This is a really important point that Pinellas County has to make. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The only other region to make this pledge is the city of St. Louis with a commitment of $500,000 annually to keep 20,000 public housing units. St. Louis is actually one of the densest cities in the country with a population of 40,000. Thats a lot of housing to maintain.
St.county has built up a strong reputation as an affordable housing community and has set a solid goal of having 100% of its units affordable. Now, we’re not talking about subsidized homes, either. Our goal is to build affordable homes all over the county so that no single person pays more than 30% of their income to pay for housing or, in fact, goes to great lengths to pay for housing. This is something that the city of St.
county has done by creating a lot of affordable housing. Now in years past, St.county would be known for its affordable housing. Now people are worried about the county budget. St.county has over a million dollars in debt and has been struggling to keep up.
Pinellas County is a place with a lot of poverty. That’s why the state, city, county, and county government have each been fighting to raise taxes. In a perfect world, we would be able to simply cut property taxes in half and create a fairer tax system without having to pay for affordable housing. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so we have to make do with what we got.
The Pinellas County Housing Finance Authority is a new entity created by the state to take over responsibility for housing finance in Pinellas County. The plan is to sell off the state-owned housing stock so Pinellas County can get its finances in order. That sounds like a good idea until you realize that Pinellas County has the highest housing costs in the state and is facing a $19,000 per year shortfall in its annual budget.
Basically Pinellas County is facing a crisis of its own making. Pinellas County has one of the highest housing costs in the state. The state’s largest cities, which include St Pete, St Petersburg, and Port St. Lucie, are all in the top 10 of the state’s housing cost rankings. So Pinellas County is not only in the hole, it is staggering there also.
