$6.7 Million Fund for Orlando: Is That Enough

December 1st, 2008

Is That Enough

The City Council of Orlando is prepared to spend about $6.7 million to help the neighborhoods that has been heavily affected by foreclosures. This fund will be used to resell homes and help people in renting houses. The fund is a part of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program of HUD that has been awarded by the federal government. The fund from them will be provided to the counties and cities nationwide to help them in fighting with this real estate crisis. However, the city of Orlando is hoping to purchase only 30 homes with $6.7 million fund money. This is a city comprising of about 224,000 people.

The initial plan is to distribute the money around the city. However, the federal housing authorities aim to spend it in specific places as that they think would be more effective in fighting with foreclosure. It has been said that in the coming year, Orlando is going to target areas such as Rosemont in northwest, Engelwood in east, and Colonial Drive and L.B. McLeod Road in west-side. These places have the highest number of foreclosures in Orlando. Mayor Buddy Dyer has commented, “Rather than doing it in a citywide, sporadic manner, they want us to focus on specific neighborhoods. It’s not the end-all-be-all, but it’s certainly something.”

According to Commissioner Phil Diamond, who is a participant of the unanimous vote of the City Council, “We all know it would take a lot more than that to make the kind of impact we’d like to make . . . but we’re going to try to make as much of an impact as we can,” The counties and the cities of Florida under the federal program of HUD for fighting foreclosure is supposed to get a share of about $541 million. This for the Orange County is $28 million.

It has been decided that nearly half of the money from the foreclosure aid fund will be used to purchase 20 distressed properties in the real estate. These properties will then be repaired and will be subjected to resale activity. Orlando is going to work with outside organizations that are not going to get interest loans for purchasing properties and renovating the houses. About $1.7 million money will be used for purchasing and renovating 11 properties. These will be converted into rental houses for the lower income group. The remaining $1 million will be put to creating land bank of foreclosed property in a still unknown Orlando area.