Sarasota Livin'

Sarasota will have the 4th Community Housing Trust in Florida. We may think we are slow to move but in many ways Sarasota is at the forefront of many issues...

Land trust aims to create affordable housing for the Sarasota Herald Tribune article...

SARASOTA COUNTY -- An idea for creating and preserving affordable housing that, so far, has scarcely been used in Florida's soaring real estate markets could take root here this fall.

A new, nonprofit trust would perpetually own land on which houses priced for moderate-income families are built or remodeled. It would impose price controls on those homes for the initial sale and every sale thereafter.

Pelican Press article

HIGHLIGHTS
* The private, non-profit corporation has been assembled by SCOPE, a community organization. * It will buy land and lease it to home buyers in an effort to drive down the cost of housing. * Public and private funds will be essential for the trust to operate and meet its objectives.

Another SHT article from a few weeks back discusses the Downpayment assistance program the city & county currently have...
Home-buying assistance needs boost, official says

SARASOTA -- Fast-rising housing prices have city and county leaders considering changes to a down payment assistance program that is supposed to help working class people buy their own homes.

The maximum sale price for houses bought through the program is $163,000, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a house that cheap in a market where the median price of a resold home is more than $300,000, according to statistics from the Florida Association of Realtors.

Don Hadsell, director of the city-county Office of Housing and Community Development, has recommended raising the maximum sale price eligible for assistance to $200,000.