The following editorial was recently submitted by Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice:
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops is deeply encouraged by the signal Governor DeSantis broadcast to the people of Florida and to the Florida Legislature by presenting a budget that uses every penny of Sadowski State and Local Housing Trust Fund money solely for housing. The Florida Catholic Conference was one of the eleven founding members of the Sadowski Coalition back in 1992 when the William E. Sadowski Act was enacted. We are now one of over 30 statewide organizations that comprise the Sadowski Coalition.
Faith-based organizations make up only a portion of the Sadowski Coalition. Most of the Sadowski Coalition members are business groups, such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Retail Federation, the Florida Realtors, and the like. We share with those groups an interest in helping the people of Florida to flourish in every way.
In economic terms, we know that using Sadowski state and local housing trust fund money for housing will have an enormous positive impact in Florida. That impact is estimated to be over $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2019-2020 if the Legislature appropriates all the housing trust fund monies for housing.
Economic interests, important as they are, are not our primary interest in utilizing all the available monies exclusively for housing. We believe it is fundamentally unacceptable for Florida’s most vulnerable residents to live in fear of homelessness. Our concern is for the frail elderly, people living on fixed incomes because of disabilities, and hard-working families unable to make ends meet. And we believe that Florida can do better.
According to the Florida Housing Coalition’s 2018 Home Matters Report, there are nearly a million very low-income households that spend more than half their income on housing costs. Florida knows how to help these families.
The Sadowski Act created the SHIP program and supports the SAIL program; these programs are the best in the nation for incentivizing the private sector, including mission- based nonprofits to provide a hand-up. They are successful in helping families with children experiencing homelessness to get into apartments, the frail elderly to have life safety repairs to their homes so that they can age in place and avoid unnecessary institutionalization and assisting Florida’s lower paid workforce move into apartments and eventually into first time homeownership.
We thank Governor DeSantis for standing up for Florida’s most vulnerable residents and for the working poor. We hope that this year will bring a return of the proper functioning of the Sadowski Act.
-- Most Rev. Frank J. Dewane is the Moderator for Catholic Charities of Florida and the Catholic Bishop of Venice, Florida.