Volusia Seeks Applicants For Its Affordable Housing Advisory Committee

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Volusia County, FL – Volusia County's Affordable Housing Advisory Committee is seeking to fill eight committee openings with applicants who are passionate about affordable housing issues.

County residents who are involved in these issues are encouraged to apply and help the County create and preserve affordable housing. The role of the committee is to review incentive strategies and make recommendations to the Volusia County Council to ensure there is affordable housing in the area.  

"This is a volunteer committee and the committee will meet no more than once a month," said Pat Kuehn, Volusia County's Community Information Specialist. 

The structure of the committee is built around the State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) program. The SHIP program helps first-time, income-eligible homebuyers and their families to secure safe, decent and affordable housing by helping fund down payments and rehabilitation and repairs.  

Future members should be actively involved in affordable housing and must represent at least six of the following areas: 

  • Residential homebuilding industry 
  • Banking or mortgage industry 
  • Homebuilding labor activities 
  • Advocacy for low-income persons 
  • For-profit and not-for-profit housing 
  • Real estate profession 
  • Local planning agency 
  • Unincorporated Volusia County residency 
  • Employer representative 
  • Essential services personnel, such as teachers and firefighters. 

"We do know that the need is great and, for instance, whenever we open our Section 8 waiting list, we get hundreds of applicants," said Kuehn. "We only open the Section 8 waiting list once every few years because we only have a limited amount of federal dollars to fund the program. And when the waiting list gets down close to zero, we open it up and bring it back up to several hundred." 

"We don't have any applicants right now and we do hope we will get some because we do need to fill all eight openings so the committee can move forward," said Kuehn. 

Committee members will be chosen by the Volusia County Council. Applications can be found at www.volusia.org/advisory. For additional information, contact Paula Szabo via email at pszabo@volusia.org or by phone at 386-736-5955, ext. 12308.