Orlando, Orange County and Central Florida communities from Deltona to Kissimmee will get millions of federal dollars to help shore up their shaky housing markets, among the nation's hardest-hit in foreclosures and abandoned properties.
All told, city, county and state government in Florida will get $541 million, part of nearly $4 billion in "neighborhood stabilization grants" announced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday.
The state itself will get $91 million of the money to parcel out for buying foreclosed homes and taking other steps to help stabilize communities hit by the subprime mortgage meltdown. Orange County will get $27.9 million, the second-highest amount allotted to any county or community in the state.
Only the far-more-populous Miami-Dade County will get a larger share, $62.2 million; another $12 million was earmarked for the city of Miami.
Orlando, with a 7.3 percent foreclosure rate, will get $6.7 million as part of the program. Local officials called the announcement welcome news but said it's too early to describe specific uses or predict how much help it might be in a metro area that posts more than $300 million a month in private sales of homes and condominiums.
"It's certainly something we could find very useful," said Carson Chandler, spokesman for Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. "We've had some challenges with foreclosures."
Chandler said city staffers are just learning some of the details of the program and it will take time to develop spending plans.
Seminole County will get $7 million, Volusia $5.2 million, Brevard $5.2 million, Lake $3.1 million and Kissimmee $2.3 million. Osceola County was not listed.
The sprawling Volusia County community of Deltona, dogged by flooding from storms in recent weeks and already reeling from a 10.6 percent home-loan foreclosure rate, among the worst in the state, will get $6.6 million.
HUD Secretary Steve Preston said states and communities hit hardest by the housing crisis will get the most money, based on a government formula, and local officials will be urged to prepare proposals for spending the money as quickly as possible.
"Time is of the essence," he told reporters in a telephone news conference.
HUD will have to sign off on the spending plans to make sure they follow congressional guidelines, he said, but communities will be under time constraints to put the money to use within 18 months.
Specific details of the grant program will be outlined in meetings nationwide in October, he said, but recipients will have a range of basic options to use the money. Those include buying homes for affordable housing, demolishing abandoned homes, offering down-payment assistance to low-income families and creating "land banks" for affordable housing.
Abandonment of a home is one of the worst outcomes, with weedy yards and deteriorating structures depressing neighborhood values even more. The HUD report rated Deltona, Kissimmee and Orlando as communities in Central Florida with a "high" risk of home abandonment.
W.D. Morris, executive director of the Orange County Housing Finance Authority, which raises money for lower-income housing assistance through bond sales, said the real-estate collapse and credit crunch seem to have no end in sight.
Earlier this month, the authority was forced to cancel a planned $15 million bond sale when insurance giant American International Group Inc. teetered on the brink of collapse.
"The bottom dropped out of the [bond] market," Morris said. "There were no buyers." Courtesy of Orlando Sentinel 9/27/08.
