JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville City Council is taking an axe to Mayor Donna Deegan’s affordable housing agenda, slashing more than $7 million out of her proposed budget aimed at the programs, according to the city’s leading affordable housing official.
But there’s a debate over how much the city is really spending on what local voters recently described as their top issue.
Council Finance Chair Raul Arias (R-District 11) pushed back on the idea that the council isn’t doing enough to address housing affordability.
“We funded just last week alone over $23 million right towards this. So, to say that we’re not funding these is quite frankly a false narrative,” said Arias.
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But that claim has been contested by Jacksonville’s Affordable Housing Administrator Joshua Hicks.
“They cut all local funding to address housing costs – more than $7 million – and then wrongly took credit for state funding that is implemented by the Jacksonville Housing Finance Authority, an independent authority," said Hicks in an emailed statement.
Among the programs cut were $2.5 million for an affordable housing development fund, $1.5 million for a downpayment assistance program, $750,000 for a utility tap-in fund and half a million for rental assistance and eviction diversion.
Arias argued many of those programs would have cost a lot of money and only benefited a few dozen residents.
“To have money allocated for just those 30 people, it begs to ask the question, who are those lucky lottery winners?” said Arias.
Instead, Arias has pushed for a $13.4 million property tax cut, which would amount to a little more than a dollar-a-month in savings for the average homeowner.
Mayor Deegan has argued that money would be better served funding targeted programs like the ones she had initially proposed.
“We knew coming into this budget that this was a finance committee that was gonna try to take an axe to a whole lot of stuff, and so I think our hope is that as we continue down this path that we’ll end up being able to put some of those things back in,” said Deegan.
The finance committee closed out its last meeting Friday with a grand total of $29 million in budget cuts to date.
Arias said there’s likely more to come, and given the State DOGE team has its eyes on Duval, it’s unclear how much of that the mayor’s team will be able to claw back.
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