INVESTIGATES: City land trust sits on vacant lots while local nonprofits fight for affordable land

Action News Jax found that the city’s efforts to fix a bungled affordable housing program are still falling short.

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Action News Jax first told you earlier this month how the City of Jacksonville has been giving away property to people who said they would build affordable housing but failed to ensure those new owners followed through.

Action News Jax Investigator Emily Turner has followed the city’s efforts to fix it and reports that so far, they haven’t worked.

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The whole point of the program was to create affordable housing. That failed miserably in the first 2 years, and Turner broke that story.

But now, as the Deegan Administration works to make it right, Turner found it just sitting on more than 60 affordable housing properties while local groups who have already built on their properties are begging for that land.

When Bishop Harry Williams moved home, he came back to the Eastside. He wanted to make a change in the place he grew up.

“I wrote down a list of all the things that I believe God had put on my heart to do when I got back home., and one of those things was coming back home to the community to build affordable housing,” Bishop Williams said.

Read: INVESTIGATES: Broken promise properties; Jacksonville councilman calls for accountability

Williams got 5 of the 174 surplus properties the city gave away in 2019 to build affordable housing for his community.

Just blocks away, Habitat for Humanity has done the same with the 10 free properties it received from the city since 2020.

But, the city program that made those homes possible failed to ensure all the required homes were built. An Inspector General report found that 95% of the people who got those free properties in 2019 failed to provide the promised housing.

Read: INVESTIGATES: Broken promise in Jacksonville affordable housing as free property turned profits

As a result, Travis Jeffrey, the city’s chief of housing and community development, said the city will crack down on future processes and recipients.

“We knew there were some issues. The original legislation just didn’t have the teeth that we needed to be able to go back and get those properties,” he explained in a city council meeting.

Among other changes, recipients are now limited to 3 properties.

Meanwhile, the Jacksonville Community Land Trust gets the first right of refusal on those properties with no limit before they enter the surplus program.

Read: INVESTIGATES: Chief of affordable housing answers tough questions about Jax 2019 property giveaway

The Land Trust is a public-private partnership the city created in 2021 to general and protect affordable housing, but Action News Jax found it has done nothing to put homes on the properties it owns.

Jeffrey said the Trust has 62 surplus properties it has yet to build anything on while groups like Habitat for Humanity are desperate for real estate.

“They’re sitting on multiple properties that haven’t been developed,” Jeffrey explained.

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Instead, Williams and Habitat for Humanity compete with the market to find more land. That need is forcing the organizations to start looking outside the urban core where their missions have been focused while 64 properties in many of those neighborhoods sit vacant.

The Chief of Housing and Community Development said he’s aware of the problem, agrees that it’s a problem and is working with the Deegan Administration to rectify the issue.

Turner reached out to the Mayor’s Office about what those plans look like and what the time frame is. She is still waiting to hear back.

Read: INVESTIGATES: First-time DUI arrests triple over the past 3 years in St. Johns County

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