Not like the Challenge Fund, but other help for housing

Running for mayor in 2011, Bob Buckhorn promised to launch an initiative modeled on one of Tampa's best-known programs from the late 1980s and early 1990s: the Mayor's Challenge Fund.

Providing affordable housing for first-time homebuyers and rehabilitating existing homes would be a priority in the first year of his administration, Buckhorn told voters. His version of the Challenge Fund would offer down payment assistance, low interest rates and other help to prospective buyers.

Since his election, the mayor has launched a housing initiative of his own in Sulphur Springs, but it didn't happen on the schedule he promised, and it's not as big, complex, well-funded or geographically broad as the Challenge Fund.

Then-Mayor Sandy Freedman, Buckhorn's boss in his first job at City Hall, started the original Challenge Fund after a citywide housing survey in 1986 concluded that more than a fifth of Tampa's housing was substandard.

Her program used public funds, often federal grants, to finance part of the cost of buying, rehabilitating or building affordable housing throughout the city. As part of the program, City Hall also agreed to wait longer than a private lender would to be repaid. That allowed banks and other lenders to provide the balance of the loans. It also opened a door to homeownership for low-income buyers.

By the end of Freedman's second term in 1995, the Challenge Fund was rehabilitating 1,600 homes per year. Banks pledged more than $67 million to build or rehabilitate low-cost housing through the Challenge Fund.

By comparison, Buckhorn's program took nearly two years to start, partly because the job of city housing manager remained vacant for a year and a half after he rejected the first round of applicants and re-advertised the job.

Buckhorn's initiative has focused mainly on Sulphur Springs, a neighborhood he says was on the verge of collapse. And as lenders and nonprofits work to recover from the recession, the city is doing more of the work itself.

"It is a different program than what the Challenge Fund was, but I think it's appropriate given where today's economy is and what the housing market is and the neighborhood that we're in," Buckhorn said in an Nov. 19, 2014 interview. "It's more targeted, particularly at Sulphur Springs."

In January 2013, Buckhorn announced the launch of the "Nehemiah Project," which demolished 51 vacant houses in or near Sulphur Springs. Each had a string of code enforcement violations. None could be lived in. None were historic.

The city, alone or in partnership with other organizations, also:

• Assigned three code enforcement officers full time to Sulphur Springs.

• Picked up and removed about 150 tons of trash and debris.

• Partnered with Tampa Electric to install 408 street lights.

• Stepped up police patrols, which officials say resulted in a 20 percent drop in crime in Sulphur Springs.

• Opened the new Springhill Community Center, built with $2.5 million from the Community Investment Tax.

• Entered a $1 million partnership with the nonprofit Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation to split the cost of creating a synthetic-turf youth baseball field at Spring­hill Park Community Center,

One thing that helps in Sulphur Springs, Buckhorn said, is that there are a lot of social service agencies "at the table" with the city. The Sulphur Springs Neighborhood of Promise is a collaboration, originally organized by the YMCA, that tracks and coordinates the work of 25 different nonprofits working in the neighborhood, city officials say.

"Building new houses doesn't solve the social problems out there," Buckhorn said. "You've got to bring a lot of other people to the table."

In January 2014, the city began hiring contractors to build new houses on those vacant lots. Seed money for the construction came from $1.4 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds.

Through November 2014, the city built and sold or had contracts on 11 houses. Another round of construction is expected to begin in January or February of 2015. The city uses state funds to offer buyers help making their down payments. Some other things Buckhorn promised, such as reduced origination fees, are not part of the program.

Still, the city does require all buyers to work with nonprofit housing counseling agencies before they make an offer, city spokeswoman Ali Glisson said. And through those counseling programs, buyers get help applying for the loans and have access to reduced interest rates.

Beyond the Nehemiah Project, Buckhorn said the city stands ready to work with groups focused on housing. For example, he said, Operation Reveille, a joint program between the Tampa Hillsborough Homeless Initiative, Hillsborough County and the city, got 50 homeless veterans off the street on Veterans Day.

But 30 more veterans were eligible for housing vouchers through the Veterans Administration and couldn't get them because there wasn't a caseworker available, Buckhorn said. So he said he agreed to put $40,000 in the city budget for that caseworker so those veterans could "get the vouchers to get them off the streets and into housing."

During his 2011 campaign for mayor, Bob Buckhorn promised to make affordable housing for first-time homebuyers and rehabilitation of existing homes a priority during the first year of his administration. And he promised a housing initiative modeled on Tampa's Challenge Fund of the 1980s and 1990s. Buckhorn didn't get to this issue until well after his first year in office, and his initiatives in Sulphur Springs are not as big, geographically broad, or complex as the Challenge Fund. The city has offered down payment assistance to qualified homebuyers, but not some other forms of aid Buckhorn specified in his promise. Buckhorn's work in Sulphur Springs is significant and consistent with the goals of helping homebuyers and rehabilitating housing, but is substantially less than the initiative he originally described. We rate this as a Compromise.