PROGRAM SUCCESS – SEPTEMBER 2010
PAGE 5
Feds Give Central Florida $48 Million to
Battle Foreclosure Blight
Money is part of $208 million flowing into Florida - the most of any state
16 are undergoing renovations, including the three-
bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom home where the news
conference took place. There is already a waiting list
of HUD-approved buyers for the house, part of a
tidy upper-middle-income neighborhood. “The
impact of this program goes beyond just
rehabilitating those properties,” Orlando Mayor
Buddy Dyer told reporters, noting the ripple effect of
new jobs.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando also
applauded the stabilization program, saying it would
further reduce the “blight” of foreclosures. Although
the rate of mortgage defaults in Orange County
already is slowing, Grayson said, the region “still
can use all the help that we can get.”
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer speaks at a press conference along with
Congresswoman Corrine Brown announcing millions of dollars in new
funds to help the troubled housing market and slow foreclosures in the
Orlando Metropolitan area.
By Kate Santich
Orlando Sentinel
Central Florida is getting nearly $48 million in federal funds to bolster foreclosure-
plagued neighborhoods and help would-be homeowners, officials announced
Thursday. The money is part of $1 billion in “neighborhood stabilization program”
funds from the Obama administration that will help local housing authorities across
the country buy and renovate abandoned properties. The money also can be used to
offer assistance with down payments and closing costs to low- and moderate-income
homebuyers.
Florida, which has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, will receive
about $208 million — the largest amount of any state. The second-largest allocation,
$149 million, went to California.
Conducting a news conference at a once-abandoned two-story home in southeast
Orlando, top officials of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
joined local politicians in trumpeting the allocation, which they said will go a long
way to ease the impact of the state’s housing crisis. “To us, it’s an easy investment,”
said HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims. “It means someone will wake up and have a
job to go to. … A community will have a new neighbor. And a new family will live
here.”
The latest grants are the third, and possibly final, round of HUD neighborhood-
stabilization funding. Among the Central Florida grants are $11.5 million for Orange
County, nearly $4 million for Seminole and more than $3 million each for Lake,
Osceola and Brevard counties and the city of Orlando.
Last year, Orlando received $6.7 million from the first round of HUD grants — money
it has used to buy 44 foreclosed homes and create 200 jobs for construction workers,
contractors and landscape architects. So far, 25 of the homes have been renovated and
The program also seeks to prevent future
foreclosures by requiring financial counseling for
families receiving homebuyer assistance. They must
also get their mortgages from lenders who agree to
comply with the federally approved “sound lending
practices.”
The money comes from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed this
summer. It follows two earlier rounds of
neighborhood-stabilization efforts: the Housing and
Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which provided
$3.92 billion nationally, and the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which appropriated
an additional $2 billion.
HUD did not provide specifics on when the money
would reach local housing authorities, but it will
take several weeks just to issue guidelines on exactly
how the money can be spent. Although initial
neighborhood-stabilization funds often were slow to
be put to use, officials said recipients now have a
better grasp on what to do. As of this month, all
previous money for Florida has been designated for
specific projects.
One novel feature of the stabilization program is that
rental property is being offered first to nonprofit
organizations that want to use it for their clients —
often people with some kind of disability.
In Orlando, for instance, the charity Attain, which
helps people with developmental disabilities, has
provided permanent housing to 15 people in four
homes obtained through the program.