Alachua County Commission agrees to buy Sunrise Inn from St. Francis House but expresses concern about condition of the building

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their August 13 Regular Meeting, the Alachua County Commission voted to send a Chair letter to the City of Alachua regarding a proposed development near Mill Creek Sink, agreed to sell the former Dollar General property to the Town of Micanopy, and agreed to purchase the Sunrise Inn from St. Francis House for $1.95 million.

Mill Creek Sink development

After a member of the public spoke during General Public Comment and asked the Commission to intervene in a proposed development near the Mill Creek Sink in Alachua, Commissioner Ken Cornell said he would like to send a Chair letter to the City of Alachua to “try to open up a dialogue between our [Environmental Protection] Department and their City, to offer those resources and see if we couldn’t get into at least a discussion about protecting the Mill Sink resources.” He said it would be a “non-threatening letter [that] really just offers resources.”

Commissioner Anna Prizzia supported the idea: “I know they don’t have an Environmental Protection Department, and perhaps they don’t really realize quite the impact of this sink and its relative importance to the overall watershed and the overall springshed.” She suggested asking staff to “spend just a little bit of time gathering what data we do have about the importance of that sink and its environmental sensitivity” to send to the City of Alachua. 

Prizzia made a motion to ask staff to do that research and share it, along with a letter offering the County’s support for developing environmental protection standards for the development near Mill Sink. Cornell seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously, with Chair Mary Alford saying she had also planned to bring up the issue.

Interlocal Agreement with ASO for radio maintenance and sale of Dollar General property

In other business, the board approved an Interlocal Agreement with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office to maintain the County’s emergency radio system and approved the sale of the former Dollar General property to the Town of Micanopy. 

Canvassing board appointments

Cornell made a motion to appoint Commissioner Chuck Chestnut as the second alternate to the Canvassing Board and to recommend that the Chief Judge appoint Lee Pinkoson as the substitute and former Judge Thomas Jaworski as the other alternate. The motion was approved unanimously. Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler is also serving on the Canvassing Board. 

Sunrise Inn

The board next discussed purchasing the Sunrise Inn from St. Francis House for $1.95 million. The building is located on two parcels across the street from each other on SW 14th Street and has 35 residential units. 30 of the units are currently subsidized with HUD vouchers that are tied to the property and will be lost if they are not retained on that site. The other five units are subsidized on a sliding-fee scale. 

Community Support Services Director Claudia Tuck said that remediating asbestos, lead, and mold will cost about $350,000, and the required immediate renovations will cost about $1.55 million. More renovations will be needed in about five years for $870,000, and renovations needed in ten years will be about $1.15 million, for a total of $4.2 million. Tuck said staff recommended purchasing the property “in an effort to prevent the loss of the 35 affordable housing units, particularly those 30 vouchers, which we cannot get back. It’s also, though, made with the knowledge and concern that this facility will require extensive renovation, and there is currently no funding identified.”

Prizzia: Due diligence report is “pretty dire”

Prizzia said the due diligence report was “pretty dire, and I think the numbers for renovation reflect that.” She asked whether the buildings could be torn down or maybe “a full gut and a re-roof on one of them” if HUD would allow maintaining the vouchers through the rebuilding process. She asked whether the costs of the land and the buildings could be split because infrastructure sales tax money can only be used to purchase land. The County previously allocated 30% of the infrastructure half of their share of the one-cent sales surtax to affordable housing.

County Attorney Sylvia Torres said staff didn’t feel comfortable that infrastructure sales surtax funds could be used to buy the property because “it certainly does not appear to be just land that we would be purchasing here. It’s improved land.” Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby agreed, “It’s not land. Land is land.” Crosby said that with the renovation costs, the cost could be up to $180,000 a unit: “Is that the best policy decision… or is it to put $180,000 to build your own units… and have your own units somewhere else?”

Prizzia expressed her frustrations with the limitations on the uses of the infrastructure sales surtax money: “I’m kind of at my wits’ end with how we can spend and not spend this money. Every time we come across a project, we get told we can’t do the project, the project is ineligible… I think that we’re being overly cautious with regards to how we’re looking at this. And I do think that land is land, and this is a land transaction… I get the building asset itself not being part of land, but it’s very easy to kind of separate that out – the improved property, if we tore this building down, is worth something.”

Prizzia: “Between a rock and a hard place”

Prizzia said St. Francis House “put us between a rock and a hard place in that they were going to sell this to somebody to tear it down and build something fancy, and we’re trying to save it. So now we’re going to have to spend what I think is too much money for the property and the condition it’s in, and then we’re going to have to spend the money to renovate it.” She wanted the County to meet with HUD and “see if we can help them understand why we need to tear this thing down and rebuild.”

Prizzia said she had spoken with Family Promise, and they said there are 463 families consisting of 1,636 individuals including about 1,000 children in “some form of homelessness right now. They weren’t counted in the Point-in-Time count because they’re on couches, they’re doubling up with other families, they’re living in their car.” This year’s Point-in-Time count found 644 homeless people, a 17% decrease from last year’s count of 725.

Crosby pointed out that the HUD vouchers would provide ongoing income to offset the renovation costs. 

Cornell: “A win-win”

Cornell said he was willing to take the risk of “expand[ing] the definition of how we utilize infrastructure surtax dollars for affordable housing and economic development… I think this is a win-win. It’s more expensive than we thought, but it’s always more expensive than we thought, and it doesn’t change the need and also doesn’t change the reason why we’re doing it.”

Chestnut: “It seems like there’s a fear in poor people to report housing violations that affect them”

Chestnut said, “I normally don’t say much… I try not to get upset and stuff like that. But it’s deplorable… Those sound like a lot of code violations that were never reported… This happened over many, many years of neglect, lack of maintenance, and all that stuff… It seems like there’s a fear in poor people to report housing violations that affect them… and it just upsets me because it just takes me back to the days of Kennedy Homes… I think to save those vouchers, it’s the right thing to do and to also make it better for those folks there… It just hurts my heart that people are living like that.”

Chestnut said affordable housing developers need to maintain the facilities for 20 or 30 years, “not just milk it for the dollars they can get out of it… They’re doing it on the backs of poor people and people who are less fortunate… I think that’s wrong… Poor people catch hell in this country, and that is a true statement… I’m appalled at that…. You know, you got rich people who maintain their lifestyles but don’t have compassion for somebody who’s less fortunate… and I thought it was my responsibility as a Christian to bring those people up to where I’m at and support those people, but we don’t live that way… And if we can save this property and make it better,… that’s what we need to do… It’s just become frustrating sometimes, just to let people continue to get away with murder, to some degree, with things like that.”

Alford said, “I also was horrified by those reports, and particularly the safety issues… It was pretty disgusting… I really hope that we can negotiate with HUD on this. I mean, they keep approving these [units], right? They have continued to approve these as appropriate for people to live in. And I find that really, really frustrating… I feel like HUD should work with us on this.” She asked Tuck to “try with them.”

Chestnut suggested talking to “our Congressional delegation” because Representatives Corrine Brown and Cliff Stearns had been instrumental in getting HUD to work with the County to relocate Kennedy Homes residents. 

St. Francis House hopes to relocate outside of downtown

Wheeler asked whether St. Francis House is planning to stay open, and Executive Director Lauri Schiffbauer said, “We want to keep the shelter open. We’d like to relocate the shelter into a different area – still on a bus route but a little more out of town. Downtown is not necessarily family-friendly, so our plan, long-term, is to relocate the building.” She said they currently have eight rooms for families and single women, but they would like to have at least 20: “We are always at capacity.”

Schiffbauer continued, “I do apologize about the condition of the building. I frankly did not know it was that bad. We work with ACHA (Alachua County Housing Authority), and they do room inspections every year, and it’s never been brought to my attention that there was lead, that there was asbestos. All rooms pass, you know, so I deeply apologize for not being more aware.”

Wheeler said she knew of other housing developments where “the conditions are not good, either – and it shouldn’t be up to the tenant to be the one reporting the code violation. It should be these authorities… that should be held responsible for the lack of reporting, not the tenant.”

Five-part motion

Cornell made a motion to “approve the closing and other transactional costs for the option contract between Alachua County and St. Francis House Inc, for the property,… and authorize the Chair or the County Manager or their designee to sign the notice of exercise of option and any additional documents approved by the County Attorney necessary to complete the transaction. Part two is a request that staff work with HUD to help us identify additional potential funding sources for the rehab and renovation of this site. Part three, we request that our federal lobbyists and our local delegation work with us with our HUD request and bring back an update to the board within 90 to 120 days prior to any long-term renovations being made. And then part four is that we request that our Chair write a letter to the two housing authorities, the Alachua County Housing Authority and the Gainesville Housing Authority, requesting that they provide us with a report or presentation on how their annual inspections are done for federal- and state-funded housing vouchers that we receive, so that we understand how these units are being maintained.” He clarified that the discussions with HUD were for the purpose of keeping the vouchers.

Tuck asked Cornell to add to the motion that the purchase would come from reserves with the ability to repay the funds if the County gets clarification on the infrastructure sales surtax. Chestnut seconded the motion. 

The motion passed unanimously.