DataDive Repo 10/2023
The Central Florida Foundation (CFF) and the Florida Community Loan Fund (FCLF) are working to close the affordable and attainable housing gap in Central Florida. They do this through providing capital and expertise. CFF and FCLF recognize that in order to close the affordable and attainable housing gap in Florida, they need solutions that can support operational scale and close immediate gaps. We’re proposing to use web development and data science skills to produce scalable capital investment tooling prototypes and cross-community insights so that demand can be met.
Availability and accessibility of affordable housing is a national problem. Central Florida, this need is particularly acute - with Orlando being the second-worst market for available affordable housing in the United States. Public and private partnerships are looking to close this housing gap in a number of ways - and they need access to information and tools that would help them support getting new housing in the market as efficiently as possible. The Central Florida Foundation (CFF) is one of the leading actors in Central Florida focusing on attainable housing. As they describe the challenge: “The lack of attainable, available housing plagued Central Florida well before COVID-19, and now, the crisis mounts every day. Almost 48% of people in the Orlando metro spend more than 30% of their income on housing, with some spending up to 50%. This leaves many precariously housed and one emergency away from losing their home. With even more than 1,500 people moving to the region every week, we can’t build our way out of this. That means we need long-range plans and solutions to make sure everyone in Central Florida has access to a home that fits their budget.” CFF is interested in understanding the funding landscape for solutions - including and beyond new construction - as well as challenges and opportunities to solution implementation (e.g. land use controls, zoning policies, tax policies and more.) With multiple financing vehicles available for housing (including capital access and tax incentives for workforce housing, affordable housing, new construction), CFF and their collaborators are interested in the potential opportunities for development and the success of previous funding programs.
One key actor in the affordable housing funding landscape is the Florida Community Loan Fund (FCLF.) FCLF is a leader in financing affordable housing construction, and a collaborator of the Central Florida Foundation. As a community development financial institution (CDFI), FCLF exists to maximize opportunities for people and places outside of the economic mainstream. One program that FCLF manages is a $10M grant fund of the federal Capital Magnet Fund program to help fund affordable housing in the state of Florida, and this grant fund is coupled with additional lending capital. As program stewards, FCLF has to carefully manage a portfolio of investments and track over a long period of time to ensure that their funding meets program requirements. This management process is currently time-intensive, manual, and susceptible to errors. FCLF would like to improve their current tooling and process for managing this portfolio. FCLF works across the state of Florida (including within Central Florida) and this project will look at data across the state.