City Administrator outlines proposed Pensacola Workforce Housing program

Marcie Whitaker, City of Pensacola Housing Administrator, outlined Mayor Ashton Hayward’s workforce housing program during the agenda review on Dec. 5.

Introducing Whitaker’s presentation, City Administrator Eric Olson said, “This is an expansion of existing programs. Eventually we’re gonna be coming to you, asking you to appropriate money, or to take money that we’ve found, maybe through property purchase, and appropriate that for the purposes of these programs.”

Whitaker told the council that the program will be a local housing assistance plan for law enforcement, fire, rescue emergency services, teachers, health care professionals and other professional industry individuals. It will fit within a similar program that the housing department currently administers on a county-wide basis.

“It would be targeted toward 120-percent of area median income, which is in keeping with the current home buyer program in the local housing assistance plan,” she said. “It would be offered for the purchase of a either new or existing single family residence within the city limits, allowing for up to $50,000 to be used toward down payment or closing cost, and be secured with a zero interest deferred payment loan, which would be forgiven over equal increments over five years.”

Olson explained that the program would be funded primarily from the sale of surplus city property.

“How much that is we don’t really know, but we think there’s a use for that and that use could be some type of incentive to develop work force housing,” he said.

“The action that you’ll see us requesting of council is number one—agreeing to surplus certain city properties, and then either using that money directly for these programs or allowing those certain infill lots to be assigned to the housing division for use for these programs.”

Olson said the council should expect to see the specifics of the program at its January meeting.

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Inweekly will be curious to see if the Blount School property is included in the program as surplus property or infill that the housing division can handle without council approval of the development.