Affordable homes built by Escambia County sitting empty during housing crisis. Here's why:

Escambia County’s use of the State Housing Initiatives Partnership Program (SHIP) is under scrutiny after county staff announced there is no longer any funding available for down payment assistance through the SHIP program. Now some are questioning why the county is spending so much of the state dollars, used jointly by the city of Pensacola and Escambia County, on other programs including building brand new homes and rebuilding others, and it's not really clear who is getting these homes or how recipients are selected.

The county is sitting on 14 homes that were built to help meet the need for affordable housing in the community. Some $600,000 in SHIP funding was used to build three of them at a cost of about $200,00 each. The rest are being funded with a combination of state and federal funds. The houses are in various stages of construction, and many are finished or close to being finished.

However, there are no immediate plans to list the houses for sale because county staff say they are still working to find a partner organization to help sell them because it’s illegal for the county to do it as a government entity.

Some members and participants of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) say the unsold homes funded with SHIP monies are tying up dollars that could help replenish the down payment assistance program.

“Once they sell them or figure out a mechanism to do that, then it would replenish some of the SHIP dollars so that maybe down payment assistance would come back before September of 2025,” said AHAC Chair Crystal Scott. “It would put some funds back in the SHIP program for use for something else.”

Last month, the county announced that SHIP funding for down payment assistance was no longer available to new applicants because that pot of money had run dry until at least fall of 2025, possibly longer.

Escambia Neighborhood Enterprise Division Manager Garett Griffin, who helps manage the SHIP dollars, said $1.3 million was spent on the down payment assistance program, more than double what is typically allocated, because the city and county agreed to give first-time home buyers more money toward down payment assistance due to the sharp rise of home prices. He said they spent more money helping more people this past year than they had budgeted for, so they used the upcoming year’s SHIP allocation for down payment assistance dollars to cover all of last year's applicants, which left the coffers for the program empty for the next year to 18 months.

“That money has already been spent because we didn't want to shut the program down,” Griffin told members of AHAC at their Aug. 8 meeting, “but we're now at a point where we no longer have a choice. We've got to keep the rest of the money there for our rebuilds, for our emergency rehabs, and for our regular rehabs. Now there's the possibility of getting an additional allocation. If something like that were to happen, then of course we would want to start that back up.”

The county says the money goes to projects like housing rehabilitation, down payment assistance, wheelchair ramps, emergency repairs, and new home builds and the county decides how much money each program receives. Of the $3.2 million in SHIP funding Escambia County and Pensacola received for the past year, the county set aside $497,500 on 18 units for the purchase assistance program; $800,000 on four units under the demo/reconstruction program; $675,000 on nine units under the owner-occupied rehabilitation (OOR) program; $70,000 on 10 units under the OOR accessibility program; $25,000 on disaster mitigation/assistance; and $150,000 on six units under the owner-occupied emergency repair program.

According to an Escambia County press release, the county completed 123 projects since fall of 2023. Of those, 54 were home buyers who received down payment assistance, which has now been suspended. In 2022, the county completed 57 projects, with 36 home buyers receiving down payment assistance through the SHIP program.

At the Aug. 8 AHAC meeting, Pensacola City Housing Administrator Meredith Reeves, who previously worked for Escambia County, questioned how the county is prioritizing the use of SHIP saying even with the increased allocation assistance to first-time home buyers, proportionately the county has dropped the amount that has historically been set aside for down payment assistance.

“Out of these numbers, the majority of purchases are in unincorporated Escambia County,” Reeves said at the meeting. “The need to do purchase assistance inside the city limits, the homes are often on average $40,000 higher, at least. So, there is a need to have more funding if someone's buying in the city limits just because of the price differences.”

Mayor wants answers: Pensacola seeks answers from Escambia County on why housing program money is gone

In explaining spending priorities, Escambia County staff discussed the county's home rehabilitation program. Besides repairs like new roofs and windows, the county also builds new houses for some people with no clearly stated criteria as to who receives the assistance except that they are low to moderate income. The county even offers recipients a "custom home experience," spending up to $195,000 on each house it rebuilds and renovates.

"We've got to get the home plans selected and we have some standard plans that we utilize, but we also sit down with them and really are able to give them a custom home experience," said Griffin. "They get to pick out if they want another bathroom here, they want to move the bedroom around, knock a wall down, add different lighting on the outside of the home, things like that. So they really enjoy that process."

Pensacola Habitat for Humanity Chief Executive Officer Sam Young questioned Griffin about spending so much SHIP funding on building and rehabilitating homes when other programs, like Habitat, can do it for less money, as well as the equity of helping a handful of families with the money as opposed to putting it toward programs that could make the money go farther, like down payment assistance, and returns the investment to the community.

“If I get this right, there are 10 projects at about $200,000 (each), so that's $2 million that is completely benefiting 10 families,” Young said. “Instead of the 56 families that were served through SHIP down payment assistance, and those dollars get repaid or slowly forgiven, we're helping five to ten families. So someone's making a decision to take SHIP dollars out of down payment assistance, put it into the demo and repair and eating up a whole lot of SHIP dollars for five to 10 families instead of providing (to more down payment assistance SHIP applicants).”

Griffin and Escambia County Community Redevelopment Agency Director Clara Long, who was also at the AHAC meeting and works with Griffin on the affordable housing programs, pushed back against the questions saying many of the people they help are just as "important,” including the elderly who wouldn’t be able to get help any other way, unlike some of the first-time home buyers who they say have other programs available to them or who make more money. They say people are lining up on wait lists for the assistance.

“I think we’re missing the big picture here,” Long said. “The SHIP (down payment assistance program), a lot of the families that we're helping, we're talking about a 30%, 50% median income for these individuals. These are elderly people. To me, I'd rather help an elderly person live a longer life in a stable house than someone that's working, that can really afford to buy a house at whatever price they want to buy.”

However, the explanation was even more concerning to some AHAC members who question the county's stewardship of the SHIP dollars and the lack of clear, publicized criteria for selecting beneficiaries of the county's various rehab programs.

"Clara, what you just said is mind blowing to me," said Scott at the meeting. "It's like you're thinking about age and demographic information of people, and that's going into your decision about who you're helping."

"It's not going into my decision," Long replied. "We can't compare the home buyer, someone who's working and that can afford a home, to someone who is past that working stage and their home needs to be repaired or replaced."

Griffin added he’s putting together an annual report on how the county has spent SHIP dollars, which will include details on all projects the county has done, including how much is being spent on different programs and information on the recipients who benefitted. He said he expects to have it completed in September.

Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves has said the county’s lack of transparency and communication has him rethinking if the city should continue jointly participating with Escambia in the SHIP program under the interlocal agreement, which expires in June of 2025.

Whatever the program, whether building and selling the county’s homes, renovating existing ones, or helping people buy their first one, Scott says it’s important for the city and county to be on the same page.

“What we really need to be talking about is solutions,” Scott said. “Whatever the reason that those homes are sitting vacant, let's figure out what to do with them and how to get them where they need to be, which is providing ownership opportunities for people in our community.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Affordable homes built by Escambia County sitting empty during housing crisis. Here's why: