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Taking Issue With Affordable Housing Stories
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Published: July 14, 2008
The Housing and Education Alliance (HEA), which I oversee, is dedicated to finding homes for low-income families.
Recently, I have been derided in several Tampa Tribune articles. I was depicted as a business woman who claimed to be a "whistleblower" but who was out to "protect her multimillion-dollar nonprofit company."
I want to set the record straight.
HEA every day works to help low-income families realize their dream of homeownership. It helps them obtain down-payment assistance and home buying counseling.
We help families repair their credit and prepare for the purchase. The process can some times take a year or longer.
From 2002 through 2005, HEA facilitated $5 million in direct assistance for Hillsborough residents - mostly African American and Hispanic first-time homebuyers - from county funds.
We did all of this with minimum overhead. The pursuit of profit is not our motivation.
In response to Tribune staff writer John Allman's pieces, "Housing Informer Protected Own Firm," (June 15) and "Subdivision Divided," (June 26), I want to clarify misrepresentations.
After answering Allman's questions for two hours, I was surprised by what he ended up printing. During our meeting he asked why HEA made more than $2.5 million dollars on our 26 single-family affordable housing project. I explained that HEA did not earn anything close to this amount on the Amber Place project.
Allman took the total gross sales number of the housing units sold in a particular year and then made that number HEA's earnings.
By this methodology, HEA would have made $100,000 per house!
He failed to take into consideration that the average home sold for $150,000 at Amber Place, and that the compensation to HEA averaged 12.17 percent.
For the record, according to then-Hillsborough County staff, HEA was allowed to make earnings up to 16 percent, so HEA earned less than authorized.
In fact, its total earnings were $482,454.39. Over three years this comes to an average of $160,818 per year.
Additionally, the stories indicated that HEA made more than $5 million on a contract with Hillsborough County. HEA did not make anything close to such an amount. These were funds that were actually given to the homebuyers for down-payment assistance.
Between 2002 and 2006 HEA helped 389 families obtain down-payment assistance and our actual earnings were $309,255.
HEA never controlled these funds or had them in its account. HEA received an average of $800 for every client we helped purchase a home with those down-payment monies.
Generally, the stories appear to misunderstand the state of affordable home ownership funding best practices today.
Last year, HEA provided services free of charge to more than 4,000 people. HEA has been audited by every government agency including HUD, the IRS, etc., and has never been found to have done anything inappropriate.
Sylvia A. Alvarez is executive director of the Housing and Education Alliance.
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