SHIP Funding is Needed to Address Housing Inequality

Higher-income households, who are more likely to have been able to work at home throughout the pandemic, have been able to take advantage of historically low interest rates to purchase a home during the 2020 housing “boom,” or owned homes before the pandemic that have seen record breaking appreciation. Lower-income workers, who are more likely to work in the highly affected industries like retail, leisure, and hospitality, are six times less likely to be able to work from home, more likely to have lost income during the pandemic, and have felt the brunt of the economic crisis. With lower-income households largely left out of new homeownership opportunities, we will likely see wealth disparities increase after the pandemic.

SHIP Funding is Needed to Address Housing Inequality

In June 2020, Governor DeSantis vetoed the $225 million SHIP appropriation in favor of $250 million for emergency housing assistance using federal Coronavirus Relief Funds. With this veto, SHIP offices were largely left without funding for their traditional housing programs. These COVID-19 funding sources lacked much of the flexibility of the SHIP Program and were not able to be used for purchase assistance and were far more difficult to use for new construction or home repairs. Prices for new homes continues to increase in the current market, propped up by the current low-interest rate environment and low housing supply. Without purchase assistance, cost-burdened lowincome renters, unable to save for a down payment, may miss this opportunity for increased buying power. This also has significant implications in addressing the stubbornly large gap in the homeownership rate of Black and Hispanic households compared to whites and other races. As Black and Hispanic households are more likely to be costburdened, purchase assistance is a key tool communities need in closing the homeownership gap. Without traditional SHIP funding, many SHIP offices have been forced to halt their down-payment assistance programs.

The 2020 SHIP veto stalled housing rehabilitation activities as well as the development of new affordable housing construction across the state. Both the initial and subsequent COVID-19 funds have limited applications to rehabilitation and could only be used to assist in new housing construction in extremely rare instances. Many homeowners, particularly the elderly population, were in need of housing rehabilitation prior to the onslaught of COVID-19. Owner-occupied rehabilitation inproves the lives of the individual household and improves property values for communities and can serve as a source of income for small, minority contractors. Unfortunately, many rehabilitation programs were placed on hold as hardships

Month's Inventory Of Supply And Median Sale Price In 2020 For Single Family Homes

Figure 13. Home Prices and Inventory of Supply (Source: Florida Realtors, December 2020)