Housing initiative to build new homes in Sulphur Springs

One of Bob Buckhorn's boldest promises as a candidate for mayor was to create an affordable housing program modeled on the Mayor's Challenge Fund, the nationally acclaimed initiative that Buckhorn saw up-close in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a special assistant to Mayor Sandy Freedman.

Buckhorn's promise was, as usual, detailed and specific: Helping first-time home buyers find affordable housing and rehabilitating existing homes would be a "priority" for his administration. He would team up with lenders to help those buyers with "down payment assistance, reduction in origination fees, reduced interest rates, streamlined loan applications and assistance in preparing and packaging the loans." And he would get to work on the promise during his first year in office.

But by early 2013, the midpoint of his four-year term, even Buckhorn acknowledged that the city's housing efforts had not gotten his undivided attention and were not comprehensive, not organized and fractured.

Fast-forward one year: On Jan. 21 and 22, 2014, Buckhorn rolled out the second phase of an initiative designed  to build new, affordable homes — though not for the reasons or in the ways he described as he campaigned for mayor.

The city will spend $1.4 million to build 12 new single-family houses in Sulphur Springs over a 120-day period, with more to follow if all goes as planned. The money for the project comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The city has pre-qualified nine building contractors who will get the opportunity to bid on building about four houses at a time. As those houses are built and sold, the city will plow the proceeds back into building more houses.

City Hall was in a position to do this because it spent 2013 targeting 51 vacant. abandoned houses in or near Sulphur Springs. It paid two contractors up to $7,000 per house to tear down the buildings and clear the lots. It also beefed up police patrols, assigned three code enforcement officers full-time to the neighborhood, hauled away 150 tons of trash and debris, worked with Tampa Electric to install 408 new street lights and had work crews trim trees that blocked light from those lights.

Now comes the second phase of the effort, which the city calls the "Nehemiah Project," a reference to an biblical figure who rebuilt the walls of a destroyed Jerusalem.

"Neighborhoods need neighbors, and that's what this is all about," Tampa economic opportunity administrator Bob McDonaugh said at a groundbreaking on N 13th Street on Jan. 22, 2014. "We've been in cleaning  trash, trimming trees, adding street lights, and now we're going  to add some houses."

So is this Buckhorn's version of the Challenge Fund?

"I think this is the beginning of it," Buckhorn told PolitiFact Florida on Jan. 22, 2014. "The Challenge Fund, as successful as it was — it was a different time, a different time in our economy, a different time in terms of the number of foreclosures and delinquent mortgages that we have. For today's time, this is the beginning of what I think the next iteration of the Challenge Fund will look like."

Buckhorn acknowledged it's too soon to know whether the city will be able to create the kinds of assistance — help with down payments, low interest rates and reduced-cost loans — that he promised.

"We're not there yet," he said. "As this process matures and this program matures, hopefully we'll be able to incorporate all that stuff. … We may find as we go through this economy that this may not be doable."

There are other differences, too. Under Freedman, the Challenge Fund had extensive relationships with non-profit organizations that often oversaw the construction and renovation work.

For now, the city is assuming that role.

"The recession took its toll on our non-profit providers," Buckhorn said, especially those that built houses. "If this program is successful, there will be opportunities for nonprofits to participate," but in the meantime, he said, "I want to get this started. I don't want this to languish."

The Challenge Fund also often helped buyers by providing them with a deferred second mortgage that became due once they sold the house.

It's too soon to say whether the city could offer those second mortgages again, Buckhorn said.

"We would be willing to look at numerous options," he said, noting that federal community development money has been cut back since the days of the original Challenge Fund.

Finally, there is a difference in the larger goals of the effort. Buckhorn the candidate talked about the importance of helping first-time homebuyers and rehabilitating houses. Buckhorn the mayor is more focused on stabilizing one particularly troubled neighborhood.

"The situation out here in Sulphur Springs was different than what we had in the '80s and '90s because of the number of foreclosed houses, the number of abandoned houses," he said. "I think we're doing the best we can to stop the bleeding in a neighborhood that desperately needs it. This is our toughest neighborhood. This is where we have our most challenges. Those abandoned houses were exacerbating the law enforcement side of things and the need for social services, so we had to come in."

So to turn Sulphur Springs around, Buckhorn wants to bring in new homeowners.

"When people put roots in a neighborhood," he said, "they're invested in the success of the neighborhood. They're not just a tenant in a duplex."

Buckhorn's campaign promise was about first-time home buyers, affordable housing and rehabilitating existing houses. Through the Nehemiah Project, he has launched an ambitious housing program, though one with a different goal and a different approach from the original Challenge Fund.

Still, this is more than what Buckhorn accomplished during the first two years in office, when even he conceded that the city's housing efforts were "scattershot." Buckhorn may or may not end up with something more recognizably modeled on the Challenge Fund. In the meantime, this is progress. It is time to change the rating on this promise from Stalled to In the Works.