Affordable Housing in Florida: Evolving, Developing

Earl Pfeiffer, executive director of the non-profit corporation that helps families acquire a home by participating in its construction, says the concept of affordable housing in Florida is “evolving.”
Homes are increasingly attractive, maintenance of their communities is more sophisticated, amenities are more often featured, values are more substantial, he says. Yet, the financial investment supplemented with “sweat equity” remains manageable for many probably shut out of other home buying options.

As proof, Pfeiffer points to Bayou Pass, the multi-phase, enclosed affordable housing community straddling 14th Avenue between 21st and 24th Streets. Its first two phases are nearing build-out, a third is in the works.

What’s more, the Ruskin community whose name was inspired by the river shoreline conservation area called Camp Bayou and the passage to it, is but the beginning of the affordable housing evolution.

Pfeiffer, an experienced builder and real estate sales agent who cut his lower income housing teeth with the City of Tampa’s programs in the 1990s, now heads Florida Home Partnership, Inc. The non-profit corporation is dedicated to assisting first-time home buyers into home ownership when the criteria demanded by for-profit lenders cannot be met.

It’s the second largest such operation in a federal self-help program in the eastern U.S. The largest, he adds, is in the Orlando housing market.

Just as the affordable housing practice has evolved, so has the not-for-profit company at its center, Pfeiffer explains. Florida Home Partnership, governed by a 12-person board of directors, grew out of what originally was called Homes for Hillsborough, an entity founded 10 years ago by the late Dorothy Duke, a housing advocate in the north who couldn’t simply retire to Sun City Center.

Over that decade, a total of 325 homes in several different South County areas have been financed, built and occupied through the cooperative efforts of their owners and the non-profit corporation, Pfeiffer notes.

Contrary to naysayers who forecast a large number of such homes would become empty resales leading to deteriorating neighborhoods, only 29 of the 325 total have been sold in 10 years. “People,” he asserts, “really want a home of their own to take pride in.”

Several factors combine to create the functional Florida Home Partnership affordable housing program, Pfeiffer states. One involves financial assistance for the buyer, with Hillsborough County providing “pass through,” no interest loans for buyer down payments as well as a 40-year-old “self help” mortgage loan program offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Another factor keeping the partnership program at the affordable level, Pfeiffer asserts, is that the contractors’ fees are not “marked up.” Contractors doing the tradesman work bid for the jobs and partnership families, in effect, pay “wholesale prices,” he adds.

Then, of course, there’s the work actually performed by the owner families themselves, which is not paid for but eventually is compensated with equity in the properties for the owners.

The process begins with application by the interested, first-time buying family. Florida mortgage specialists look for a client who has not owned a home in the last three years and whose income is under 80 percent of the U.S. median, he says. For a family of four, that would be no more than a combined family income of $43,500 annually.

Once determined to be eligible, the mortgage application goes to USDA for funding. The approvals are bundled into a group of 10 with the closing handled as a group at the title company and the construction process begun in a group, after each family has chosen its preferred lot.

The entire process may transpire over a period of a year or more, and the building process alone consumes seven or eight months, Pfeiffer says. The natural result is that the multiple families sharing the experience simultaneously often become close friends, helping one another by sharing their skills during construction.

Unlike affordable housing developments of the past, Bayou Pass in southeast Ruskin features amenities much like its upscale neighbors. The community center on the south side of still-growing Bayou Pass has a distinctly Key West flavor befitting its tropical environment.

The development of single family Florida homes offers first-time home buyers willing to invest their own sweat equity but unable to meet for-profit lender requirements a choice of floor plans, color schemes and front elevations, but with considerably lower mortgages. Melody Jameson Photo

While such building aspects as the foundation, plumbing, electrical, block masonry, air conditioning, carpentry and cabinetry all are handled by licensed contractors who have bid for the work, there are 64 tasks from excavation and prep work to painting and finishing touches that owners themselves do, Pfeiffer notes. “It’s a great way to build a neighborhood,” he adds.

Ultimately, a family may not only move into a home of its own but also acquire considerable equity in the property at the same time. In Bayou Pass, for example, where the single family dwellings range from three-bedrooms in 1,160 square feet to a four bedroom in 1,584 square feet, the new home owner may have a $125,000 mortgage on a property with a $200,000 valuation, having contributed sweat equity in the end valued in the $75,000 range.

The monthly Florida mortgage payment well may be under $500, Pfeiffer indicates.