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Features
MOSI Isn’t Going Anywhere
MOSI
County Has No Existing Funds For Affordable Housing
BY LEON CREWS Sentinel Staff Writer
County Commissioner Les Miller said published ar- ticles about the future of the Museum of Science and Indus- try (MOSI) have been blown out of proportion.
In published reports, MOSI was being courted by devel- oper and Tampa Bay Light- ning owner Jeff Vinik to relocate to his Channelside area, close to Amalie Arena.
“Jeff Vinik made a presen- tation to the MOSI board, not us, and talked to them about relocating to the downtown area. I don’t know how the media found out about it, but the county owns the MOSI building and property, and we aren’t moving.
“The issue about a USF sta- dium was brought up by Com- missioner Ken Hagan, and that’s not something we’ve dis- cussed as a Board.”
JEFF VINIK .....wants MOSI to move into the downtown area.
Comm. Miller said Vinik is preparing to make a presen- tation to them about his idea to relocate MOSI, but he does- n’t anticipate anything hap- pening quickly on relocating the museum.
BY LEON B. CREWS Sentinel Staff Writer
County Commissioner Les Miller said he met with representatives of the Hills- borough Organization for Progress and Equality (HOPE) on May 6th to talk about af- fordable housing, and he said they want the county to estab- lish a $10 million trust fund for affordable housing.
HOPE is a national organi- zation with an office in Tampa. Their mission is to ac- tively live their spiritual values of fairness, justice, and dignity of people.
HOPE is a vehicle for con- gregations to engage and train hundreds of residents in Hills- borough County to responsi- bly act together to improve the systems affecting the qual- ity of life in communities.
Comm. Miller said the group takes an aggressive ap- proach when they meet with elected officials to solicit the urgency of their agenda.
“I explained to them we’ve had serious budget issues and the money is not there.
“The federal government and state government have cut off funding for affordable housing, and what we had has dried up.”
Comm. Miller said the representatives of HOPE need to go to State Legislators and ask them to let go of dollars for affordable housing.
“This issue is very important to us, and is always a part of our discussions.
“They prepared a proposal and gave it to Mike Merrill (County Administrator), but I haven’t seen it.
“We’ve never allocated funds to this group in the past. We have an affordable hous- ing program that works with the city, and those funds are gone.”
Lead Organizer for HOPE, Rev. Sharon Streater, said they’ve met with some of the Commissioners a lot over the years.
“We’ve met with the ones who agreed to meet with us.
“We think the Commission- ers have decided they don’t want to address this issue and they keep saying they don’t have the money. One Com- missioner told us a memo was sent out telling them not to meet with us because of the way we treat them during our
REV. JOE JOHNSON
presentations. We believe they just don’t want to take on this issue.”
Rev. Streater said there is a desperate need for afford- able housing, and it’s going to get worse.
“Our next move is to strate- gize on how to proceed from this point. We believe they could find the money, and we’d like to see them at least make an effort.”
Rev. Joe Johnson, Co- President of HOPE, said on April 20th, almost 1,000 resi- dents united at the HOPE Ne- hemiah Action to tackle the lack of decent, affordable housing.
In addressing the Commis- sioners, Rev. Johnson said, “We hope that you as our Commissioners know that we have a critical housing prob- lem.
“Tens of thousands of fami- lies in our county cannot af- ford where they live. The great recession hit working families hard. The market crash pushed people out of home ownership and into rentals. And a high number of foreclo- sures were purchased simply for investment purposes. Therefore, rent has increased while wages remain stagnant, squeezing working families with very low incomes to the breaking point.”
Rev. Johnson said accord- ing to the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the Uni- versity of Florida, Hillsbor- ough County has over 64,000 families with very low incomes that are cost burdened, paying more than 30% of their in- come for housing. And 41,700 of those families pay over half of their income for housing.
“The cold hard facts are a 2-
COMMISSIONER LES MILLER
bedroom apartment rents at about $950-a-month. A worker must earn $19-per- hour, and work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year to af- ford that apartment. A mini- mum wage worker must work about 98 hours a week, all 52 weeks of the year to afford it. Or, the family needs at least 2- 1/2 minimum wage workers working 40 hours every week of the year with no time off.”
Rev. Johnson said there’s just not enough affordable housing.
HOPE set up an Af- fordable Housing Trust Fund Task Force. The members of
the task force are:
Clergy and leaders from HOPE
The Honorable Pat Frank, Clerk of the Court
Cordel Bachelor (on be- half of Public Defender Julianne Holt)
Leroy Moore, Tampa Housing Authority
Ed Busansky, Hillsbor- ough County Housing Fi- nance Authority
Chloe Coney (on behalf of Congresswoman Kathy Castor)
Elaine Thomas, Metro- politan Ministries
Maggie Rogers, Catholic Charities
Dianne Hart, East Tampa Business and Civic Association
Oliver Berger, CAIN Properties
The task force has created a proposal for a local trust fund that would have a designated local funding source to gener- ate $10 million-a-year to meet critical housing needs.
HOPE said their goal is to ensure all families in the county have decent, affordable and available housing.
PAGE 2 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015