Advocates for low income housing are worried funding for the program is at risk so they’re fighting to keep it.
State lawmakers and their aides loaded on two buses Tuesday and Wednesday for a tour of low income properties built in Pinellas County.
“We’re very concerned that the money will go away altogether,” said Nin Bandoni, who is the chair of the Low Income Housing Network.
Bandoni organized the two bus tours. She wants to show low-income housing projects to state lawmakers from Pinellas County.
In recent years, money for those projects has been used to fill state budget gaps.
Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes took the bus tour and said his counterparts in Tallahassee aren’t sure what the money is used for.
“How do we simplify this and really only have a handful of areas that we’re really focused on, but that those are the areas we’re funding and being done in a much more transparent way,” he said.
Right now the money is used to help the low income people, the elderly, and veterans by restoring and building homes and apartment complexes.
Democratic Representative Dwight Dudley, who was also on the bus tour Wednesday, said the money has a purpose and lawmakers should not regularly use it for other things.
“You have people that are very deserving that are hardworking middle class people that are suffering that are losing their homes that are challenged and struggling,” he said.
Money for low income housing comes from the state’s Sadowski Fund. The act was passed in 1992 in honor of Representative William Sadowski who died in a plane crash.
He actually created a tax before he died to help fund housing programs.