Gabrielle Russon
Affordable housing advocates are praising the state budget for fully funding Florida’s State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) and State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL) programs to tackle the housing crisis.
The Sadowski Housing Trust Funds were fully appropriated at about $164 million for SHIP and about $71 million for SAIL. That’s in addition to $150 million from the general fund for SAIL in the 2025-26 fiscal year budget, according to the Sadowski Coalition, a nonpartisan collection of more than 40 statewide organizations.
In past years, lawmakers have raided those housing funds for other purposes.
“The Florida Legislature put together and passed a budget that uses all of Florida’s Sadowski housing trust fund monies for Florida’s SHIP and SAIL programs to help create needed housing that is affordable for Floridians,” said Mark Hendrickson, the facilitator of the Sadowski Coalition and Executive Director of the Florida Association of Local Housing Finance Authorities.
“Thank you to leadership — Senate President Ben Albritton, House Speaker Daniel Perez, Senate Appropriations Chair Ed Hooper, and House Budget Chair Lawrence McClure — for crafting a budget that continues to make housing that is affordable a priority, and thank you to lawmakers for supporting a budget that includes full funding for Florida’s SHIP and SAIL programs.”
SHIP gives “funds to local governments as an incentive to create partnerships that produce and preserve affordable homeownership and multifamily housing. The program is designed to serve very low-, low- and moderate-income families,” according to the program’s website.
Meanwhile, SAIL focuses on helping affordable housing developers get low interest loans.
“This money often serves to bridge the gap between the development’s primary financing and the total cost of the development,” the program’s website said.
Hendrickson said he is grateful to lawmakers for the state’s investment in SHIP and SAIL to address affordable housing as the state passed a $115 billion budget Monday.
“These proven programs are the state’s most successful and effective tools for creating housing that is affordable, providing safe places for Florida’s families, veterans, seniors and workforce to call home,” Hendrickson said in his statement.
