Florida’s more than 2,300 assisted housing developments provide nearly 300,000 units of affordable rental housing for low-income families and individuals.
Unlike public housing, assisted housing is privately owned, either by a for-profit or non-profit entity. Owners of assisted housing receive subsidies from federal, state, or local government programs, usually in exchange for restrictions on tenant income and rents. The most common types of subsidies are below-market mortgages, tenant rent subsidies, and tax credits. Click here to learn more about assisted housing programs and here for a tool that provides general data on assisted housing properties in Florida such as names and addresses of developments, number of units, funding sources and programs, and populations served.
In most cases, the housing assistance and associated income and rent restrictions are time-limited, usually after 15 to 50 years of affordability. In addition, many federal mortgage programs allow housing owners to prepay mortgages and opt out of affordability restrictions after a shorter period. As subsidies expire or reach opt-out dates, housing owners may convert their properties to market-rate housing.
In this way, Florida faces the potential loss of thousands of units of affordable rental housing. The Governor’s Affordable Housing Study Commission estimates that affordability restrictions for more than a quarter of the state’s assisted housing will expire in the next 15 years. Many of these developments provide affordable housing for Florida’s lowest income residents—families, elderly persons, and people with disabilities with incomes below 30 percent of the area median.
In Florida and throughout the country, preservation of assisted housing through refinancing and other types of incentives to current and potential owners is becoming a top priority for housing agencies and advocacy organizations. Click here to read the Affordable Housing Study Commission’s 2005 annual report, which discusses the need for preservation of assisted housing in detail.
The Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse’s Assisted Housing Inventory (AHI) provides information about the assisted housing developments located in each Florida city and county. The dataset includes housing funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Service (RHS), the Florida Housing Finance Corporation (FHFC), and local housing finance authorities (LHFAs). Click here for a full listing of housing funding programs included in the Assisted Housing Inventory, including data on subsidy expiration dates.
Data tools providing information about assisted housing preservation include the following:
The AHI-Preservation tool provides subsidy expiration dates for assisted housing properties. Users may search for assisted housing developments by city or county, development name, program type or funding source, and year of subsidy expiration.
The following two applications allowing searches for properties at risk of affordability loss. Search based on property, neighborhood and market characteristics signaling opt-out or deterioration/default risk.
The HUD Prepayment, Opt-Out and Refinancing Database lists affordable rental housing developments that were funded under a HUD program and have prepaid the mortgage, refinanced the mortgage, opted out of a rental assistance contract, or notified HUD of a potential opt-out. Data are for 2005 and first quarter of 2006.
County maps show the locations of assisted housing properties.
In the following example, we use data downloaded from the AHI-Preservation tool to describe Escambia County’s inventory of assisted housing and the potential loss of units due to expiring subsidies. Click the “How?” links to learn more about how to use the tool to arrive at specific information.
Escambia County has 46 assisted housing developments with 3,281 housing units receiving some type of subsidy. These developments have received mortgage financing or rent subsidies from HUD or the USDA Rural Housing Service, subsidies administered by the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, or bond financing from a local housing finance authority. Click here for a table showing locations, subsidy information and subsidy expiration dates for Escambia County’s assisted housing properties How? (1). Click here for a map of assisted properties in the county How? (2).
Nearly half of these units may be at risk of some type of loss of affordability by the end of 2010. Specifically, 19 developments with 1,507 housing units have assistance that matures or expires before the end of 2010—mostly HUD rent subsidies How? (3). It should be noted that many rent subsidy contracts are renewed on a year-to-year basis.
The following is a discussion of Escambia County properties receiving funding from various subsidy programs. Note that properties often receive funding from more than one program, so many developments are counted in more than one of the following paragraphs.
HUD Rental Assistance: Of the 46 assisted housing properties, 18 properties receive rental assistance from HUD, for a total of 1,719 units. These rent subsidies generally allow tenants to pay 30 percent of income for rent. Twelve of these developments with 1,273 rent-assisted units have rent subsidy contracts that are set to expire by the end of 2010. In fact, rent subsidies for eight of these developments with 839 units expire by the end of 2006. Note, however, that many rent subsidy contracts are renewed on a year-to-year basis, and the property owners and HUD may intend to continue to offer rent subsidies. Click here for a table of properties in Escambia County receiving HUD rent subsidies How? (4).
HUD Mortgages: 24 of the assisted housing properties with 2,438 units received mortgages or mortgage insurance from HUD to develop multifamily housing. Most of these properties also receive HUD rent subsidies. Five of the properties already have terminated HUD mortgages. Of those properties that still have mortgages and known mortgage maturity dates, none expire before the end of 2010. However, in some cases the owner may be able to prepay the mortgage after a shorter period, thus ending the income and rent restrictions. Note that many of these properties have HUD rent subsidies that do expire by the end of 2010. Click here for a table of properties in Escambia County receiving HUD mortgage assistance How? (5).
RHS Mortgages: Eight of the assisted properties with 302 units received mortgages from RHS to provide affordable multifamily housing in rural areas and smaller cities. These properties have “restrictive use periods” under which the owner must maintain the housing as affordable and can only end affordability through prepayment of the mortgage. Of the five properties with dates available, three properties with 107 units have restrictive use periods that expire before the end of 2010. Two more properties with 72 units have restrictive use periods that expire by the end of 2015. Click here for a table of properties in Escambia County receiving RHS mortgages How? (6).
Florida Housing Finance Corporation: 15 properties with 937 units received financing from at least one of these programs administered by the Florida Housing Finance Corporation: the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (4% or 9%), the federal HOME program, the State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL) program, or the Multifamily Mortgage Revenue Bond program. Five of these properties with 105 units have income or rent restrictions that expire by the end of 2010. Click here for a table of properties in Escambia County receiving financing from Florida Housing How? (7).
Local Housing Finance Authorities: No assisted housing developments in Escambia County have received bond financing from local housing finance authorities.
Info Briefs are provided by the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse to introduce housing topics and help users to find relevant data on this site.
To find preservation-related data for assisted housing properties in a particular city or county:
Go to the >AHI-Preservation tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Check one or more boxes to indicate the cities or counties of interest. You may choose as many as you wish.
On the next page, narrow your search by development name, program type or funding source, and subsidy expiration date if desired. In this example, we did not make any selections so that all assisted properties would be returned.
The results page will provide a table with development names, locations, and subsidy expiration and mortgage maturity dates. In our example, we clicked the “Download Excel data” link on the left side of the page. We then used the downloaded data to total the numbers of assisted housing developments and units, and to create a formatted table.
To find maps of all assisted housing developments in a particular county:
Go to the AHI-County Maps tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Click a link to choose a single county.
Maps and a table with development names, addresses, phone numbers, and numbers of units will appear on the following page.
To find properties with subsidies or use restrictions that expire before a particular date:
Go to the AHI-Preservation tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Check one or more boxes to indicate the cities or counties of interest. You may choose as many as you wish.
On the next page, choose a subsidy expiration date. In this example, we chose 2010.
The results page will provide a table with development names, locations, and subsidy expiration and mortgage maturity dates for properties with any subsidies expiring before the end of the chosen year. The properties may also have other subsidies with later expiration dates. Note that HUD mortgages may have opt-out dates that are earlier than the mortgage maturity date. In our example, we clicked the “Download Excel data” link on the left side of the page. We then used the downloaded data to total the numbers of assisted housing developments and units, and to create a formatted table.
To find properties with subsidies from a particular program type or funding source:
Go to the AHI-Preservation tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Check one or more boxes to indicate the cities or counties of interest. You may choose as many as you wish.
On the next page, narrow your search by program type or funding source. In this example, we chose HUD Rental Assistance.
The results page will provide a table with development names, locations, and subsidy expiration and mortgage maturity dates for all assisted housing developments receiving funding from that program. In our example, we clicked the “Download Excel data” link on the left side of the page. We then used the downloaded data to total the numbers of assisted housing developments and units, and to create a formatted table.
To find properties with subsidies from a particular program type or funding source:
Go to the AHI-Preservation tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Check one or more boxes to indicate the cities or counties of interest. You may choose as many as you wish.
On the next page, narrow your search by program type or funding source. In this example, we chose HUD Mortgage.
The results page will provide a table with development names, locations, and subsidy expiration and mortgage maturity dates for all assisted housing developments receiving funding from that program. In our example, we clicked the “Download Excel data” link on the left side of the page. We then used the downloaded data to total the numbers of assisted housing developments and units, and to create a formatted table.
To find properties with subsidies from a particular program type or funding source:
Go to the AHI-Preservation tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Check one or more boxes to indicate the cities or counties of interest. You may choose as many as you wish.
On the next page, narrow your search by program type or funding source. In this example, we chose RHS Mortgage (Restrictive Use Period).
The results page will provide a table with project names, locations, and subsidy expiration and mortgage maturity dates for all assisted housing developments receiving funding from that program. In our example, we clicked the “Download Excel data” link on the left side of the page. We then used the downloaded data to total the numbers of assisted housing developments and units, and to create a formatted table.
To find properties with subsidies from a particular program type or funding source:
Go to the AHI-Preservation tool. You can also get to this tool via a link on the Assisted Housing Inventories introductory page under the Data Access Tools tab.
Check one or more boxes to indicate the cities or counties of interest. You may choose as many as you wish.
On the next page, narrow your search by program type or funding source. In this example, we chose Florida Housing Finance Corporation. This returns results for several Florida Housing programs.
The results page will provide a table with project names, locations, and subsidy expiration and mortgage maturity dates for all assisted housing developments receiving funding from a number of Florida Housing programs. In our example, we clicked the “Download Excel data” link on the left side of the page. We then used the downloaded data to total the numbers of assisted housing developments and units, and to create a formatted table.
Last updated April 2008
