>>This week on NewsNight, Governor DeSanti says Florida might be facing the possibility of a correctio in its housing market.

It comes as lawmakers debat a range of issues, including property tax, cond reforms and insurance costs.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in Central Florida and how they shape our community.

First, tonight, Florida's housing market and efforts in the legislature to tackle issues around affordability and the cost of living.

Last week in Miami Beach, governor DeSantis did not rule out the chance of Florida's housing market experiencing a correction after a prolonged period of growth and soaring prices.

The governor made the remarks to support his idea of potentially cutting or even eliminating property taxes, which he says unfairly penalize homeowners, including those who bought at the top of the market.

>>Maybe there will be a correction in the real estate market.

That although I'll tell you I think that there is more authentic demand in Florid this time than in 2000 to 2007.

There was a lot of speculation then.

I'm not saying there's none now, but there was a lot of people have wanted to come here.

But but say there is say there's a correction.

So you bought it at a rate.

They assess it much higher.

There's a correction.

And they're going to say to keep that assessment up there, they're not going to lower the assessment.

>>Meanwhile the legislature is considering a raft of bills focused on property, including several aimed at aiding condo owners struggling with skyrocketing fees associated with stricter inspection following the Surfside collapse.

There are also severa bills filed to incentivize home hardening and require more transparency and accountability in the homeowner's insurance industry.

Here's political scientist Michael Binder, director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida.

>>We, University of North Florida came out with some pollin just a couple weeks ago talking abou the most important issue being affordability of housin and what that looks like on the property insurance market.

And there the House is holding some hearings about some alleged, profit hiding from insurance executives.

That's not policy, right?

That doesn't lead in the policy necessarily.

There is some talk of making Citizens an option for wind only coverage to help reduce the market share responsibility for that so that potentially you could see som some declines in market rates.

Citizens is also upping, their insurance rates for those folk that are still on the Citiznes platform for the last year or two, they've really been making efforts to push people off Citizens and force them into the private marketplace.

There have been a few new, companies to the scene.

But again, anybody that has property insurance is fully aware tha those costs are not going down.

They're only going up sometimes by, you know, 50 and 100%.

And that's something that the legislature really has been unable to solve.

Michael Binder from UNF there.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, coming back to u for the first time in a while.

Nick Papantonis from WFTV Channel 9.

You've been covering a few of the issues that we're talking about tonigh Nick, so good to have you here on the panel Thanks for coming in.

>>Thanks.

>>Ryan Gillespie covers local government for the Orlando Sentinel.

Thanks for coming back on th show, Ryan.

>>Good to see you.

>>And Nick Georgoudiou from The Community Paper.

Thanks for being here, Nick.

>>Thanks for having me.

>>Pleasure to have you guys here today.

Nick Papantonis, let me start with you on this and the insurance issue.

Lawmakers are considering several options on insurance in this session, particularly following a report in the Tampa Bay times that that Michael Binder referred to briefly there.

Remind us sort o how legislators are responding.

>>They tried to address this a couple of years ago.

And what it was criticize that effort.

That effort was criticize as a basically give away to insurance companies.

And so I think you're starting to see the pendulum swing in the other direction now.

And so you have this kind of menu of options that are proposed.

Maybe some of them get through, maybe none of them.

But they include things like punishing the peopl who are with failing companies and preventing them from moving over to a different company.

And within five years, you have credits being proposed for people that elevate their homes, property tax credits, that would freeze those taxes for 20 years.

They're also looking right now at whether those insurance companies are shifting money around to hide the profits, so they can get to Floridians and charge them more.

So, a side effort that's happening here behind the scenes, a little bit more is to see for lawmakers can they get more transparency in that industry.

But it is a definite shift in tone from what we saw just a couple of years ago.

>>Yeah.

And there's been some hesitancy, hasn't there, to to create more accountability barriers for the insurance industry, lest they should choose not to come into the market.

Nick Georgoudio I mean the governor had wanted condo fees as wel tackled in this special session.

That didn't happen.

But there are several efforts to address this issue writ large.

What's being considered at this time?

>>Yeah.

So condo fees went up considerabl because of insurance costs.

But also because of additiona inspections and requirements from that collaps in Surfside.

>>Surfside.

Yeah.

>>And so a few bills and other initiatives that have been, have been, proposed for this, legislature, mandatory structural integrity inspections would move from any, facility three storys or higher to six storys or higher.

So that would change the number of those that would need to be had.

And then senior citizens would have an option potentially, if they're in, low incom bracket, to get a grant to help with any assessment fees that come up.

>>Yeah.

And the governor's talked about those on fixed income, a lot of real life consequence and a lot of people in condos, especially in our coastal regions, will be watching closely what the legislature does.

Let's talk about the, propert tax, issue, which the governor has been discussing.

On our last program, I asked Democratic Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith and Republican Senator Jason Brodeur about a number of legislative priorities.

I also asked them about the suggestion of slashin or eliminating property taxes.

Here's what they said.

>>Philosophically I love the idea.

We just need to figure out, doe that mean a higher sales tax?

Does that mean reinstituting a property income or, an income tax?

Does that mean reinstituting tax on services or inheritance?

There's all kinds of ways to recapture that.

But I don't know that, you know, raising taxes, so to speak.

Or shifting taxes is goin to be very palatable to voters.

It would require some discussion.

So like I said, I love the idea.

I just I need to know how we would get there.

>>Let's be clear eliminating property tax in the state of Florida as governor DeSantis is proposing to do would actually increase sales taxes on every single perso living in the state of Florida.

It perpetuate an already regressive tax code that puts a disproportionate burden on those who are low incom or aren't making living wages.

So, this is somethin that is not a serious proposal.

It's meant to grab headlines and would have devastating consequences, certainly for our local communities.

>>Senators Carlos Guillermo Smith and Republican Jason Brodeur.

It sounds there like there's some bipartizan caution, on this idea.

You've reported on this property tax, issue.

Ryan, what are you hearing about enthusiasm for this idea and sort of the complications of trying to eliminate such a large source of local government revenue?

>>There's certainly enthusiasm coming out of the governor's office.

Governor Ron DeSantis actuall took to X, formerly Twitter to talk about thi a couple of weeks ago, responding to a post about the ide of eliminating the property tax.

And it's just kind of staye in the conversation ever since.

You know, he has gone as far as saying he wants the boldest proposal possible on the ballot come 2026.

Of course, to pass, you need to get 60% support.

But the problem with that is when you look at any local government budget anywhere in the state of Florida, the primary funding source is your property tax, and it goes-- >>Like police and fire?

>>I was gonna say, anything that people like about their city or their county.

You know, they like generally to have police protection, fire protection, pipes, yeah schools pipes to pipe storm water away from your house, parks, libraries, all of thos things are primarily funded by property taxes.

So if we take the city of Orlando, for instance, about $340 million last year in property tax revenue, that doesn't even cover their public safety budget.

So they still have to go above and beyond that just to pay for the existing level of police and fire support.

>>Yeah.

>>So you've got to replace that money somehow.

And the complication is the governor has also said that he would veto a sales tax increase, which is the primary or the most likely funding source to make up any even just a little bit of that revenue.

So there's a lot to still be determined here if something comes forward.

But at the same time, if you put on a ballot in 2026 to a homeowner, you could save $5,000 a year, you're going to get some- >>Probably about 60% of people at least would say-- >>You're going to get some support for that for sure.

>>Yeah.

No kidding.

I mean, Nick Papantoni you've come up with this story extensively as well.

I mean, what are you hearing might be the consequences o trying to make up that revenue that's lost.

>>I think then the governor's response that he was talking about came to our came from our reporting, which was that there's a report out there that's, you know, you've got three primary lever of funding a government, right?

You have property taxes, you have sales taxes, and you have income taxes.

We don't have income ta in Florida.

So get rid of that.

That's not happening.

That's a nonstarter.

Anyway.

Now you're going to take away property taxes as well.

And so what Ryan was jus talking about is the only lever you have left in a normal budget system is sales taxes.

And the governor is sayin he's not going to raise those.

So the question is, where are you?

Not only where are you going to find the money?

We have other pools in the state to play with in theory.

The problem is, is that none of them are big enough.

>>Yeah.

One of the other legislative efforts moving this week is on the constitutional amendment process.

Nick Georgoudiou we mentioned briefly a couple of weeks ago that a bill had been filed to shake up that process.

What do we know about what's envisaged?

>>Yeah.

So that's moving forward.

So it affects the citizen led constitutional amendment process, as we've talked about for a couple of these, it was 60% of the voter wanted to add it to the ballot.

So this would affect what is added to the ballot and how it's added to the ballot.

So right now, around 870,000 people have to sign a petition for an amendment to be added to the ballot.

That's, in 2026 numbers.

I think it's 871,000.

Yeah.

And it's not just from a couple of areas in the state has to be all over the state.

So it's a pretty big group and it's a pretty big initiative to try to get all of these signatures together.

What this, HB 1205 is proposing is to make it more difficult.

So it would require that anybody that is involved in the collection process is a resident of Florida.

So anybody who is a volunteer or who is paid by the organization collecting the petitions, there are shorter window for collecting those petitions and turning them in.

There are higher fines as well.

That would be affected if anything happens.

And there are a few other things that, really would affect, the ability for people to do this, including $1 million bond that any group would have to have with the Department of Elections in Florida.

I think the last thing that's, really strange is once all of the signatures are verifie by the supervisor of elections in each of the different counties, they would then have to contact each of those voters to go ahead and re verify that.

And the voters would have the opportunity to say, oh, yes, I did or no, I didn't.

Which could cause some problems down the road.

So again, making it a little more difficult for people to partake in this process.

>>And of course on the Republican side, they say, well it should be a difficult process changing the documents of the state.

Democrats are broadly opposed to this effort.

Right.

I mean, your colleague, Ryan, Jeffrey Schweers reported this week on a bipartisan amendment, that have been filed in response to the governor's efforts last year to fight, the amendments on abortion and marijuana, the proposed amendments there, what do lawmakers want to change?

So the primary thing so Democrats, as you said, have been largely opposed to what Nick was just talking about, in large part because if you loo at the state of Florida, that's about the only chance they have of getting their agenda through at this point.

There's a Republican governor there's Republican super, super majority in the House and Senate.

So in one one strateg that Ron DeSantis used, governor DeSantis used this past year was he started using tax dollars to oppose the abortion amendment and the marijuana amendment.

>>Yeah.

>>He was a bunch of state agencies that he appoints the department heads for.

We're running PSAs and advertisements and things like that opposing marijuana and abortion.

And it's hard to tell exactly how much was spent, mainly because public records requests to get that information haven't been fulfilled.

We have found at least 16 million.

The group that that ra and largely funded the marijuana amendmen last year did their own analysis and estimated it was close to 50 million.

But but yesterday we saw a Republican, in Tallahassee, actually propose an amendment to ban taxpayer funding for basicall political campaigns like that.

It was a little surprising to see, but we're seeing the legislature in Tallahassee this session really kind of push back a little bit on som of the governor's initiatives.

>>Yeah.

You could could argue that that is part of that general trend that we've seen this legislative session.

Well, fascinating story.

And we'll keep an eye on it for sure.

A reminder you can find us on social media we're at WUCF TV on Facebook and Instagram.

You'll also find us @NewsNightWUCF on X.

Okay, next tonight, more on the problem of homelessnes in Central Florida.

We'll talk more about th situation broadly in a moment, including the lates on Florida's camping ban and how it's playing out on the streets in our region.

But first, we wanted to tell you about a first of its kind solution to homelessness developed in Brevard, where unique multi-agency partnership has been formed.

The Housing Trust Group, a developer specializing in affordable housing, has teamed up with Brevard County's Housing for Homeless program to create a developmen with 90 units called Orchid Lake that blends low income housing with accommodation for people experiencing homelessness.

NewsNight's Krystel Knowles shares the story of one of its residents.

I cook almost every night, literally for the kids.

>>This time last year, having a roof over her head an a kitchen seemed unattainable.

Kentija McFadden, a single mother of two, looks back at the first tim she was able to afford a hotel a small win worth celebrating.

>>We might have nowhere to go but we gonna eat.

We gonna eat.

My kids got it.

The first night we got to the hotel and I actually cooke and I'm like, what do you want?

Like, I want spaghetti.

I'm like, spaghetti it is.

I'm like, we can we can make spaghetti.

>>For almost a year, McFadden made phone calls to shelters and nonprofits who put her name on a never ending waitlist.

She waited nearly ten months while Orchid Lake was being built.

>>Some nights it was hotels.

Some nights I wasn't.

Car, sleeping in a car.

I did DoorDash and days that I did make a decent money we'll get a hotel but days I didn't make enough.

I just sleep in a car.

>>Rob Cramp, Executive Director of Housing for Homeless, says the newly built Orchid Lake in Cocoa is a proof of concept 90 units that blend low income housing and housing for the homeless.

>>Two years ago, I spoke with you about plans for a future development.

What has happened since then?

>>We have built this.

We hav not just one development.

We have not.

We have just finished this.

We have just finished filling it up with, homeless and low income residents.

We are we are building another similar development in, Volusia County in Holly Hill.

And, next year will be starting on in for seniors in Titusville.

>>Accordin to Housing for Homeless, there are about 1,200 homeless individuals in Brevard County with 20% of them being seniors.

And that number is expected to increase annually.

>>We don't push anybody out, but encouraging people to get stabilized get a better job.

Move on.

Success to us is when they leave us on find their own job, because that makes room for somebody else.

>>Residents like McFadden spent only 30% of their gross monthly income on housing, which, according to Cramp, is what housing should cost for everyone.

However, rising rents are pushing more people into homelessness.

>>How do you feel that in a few years, when you look back on, you know, last year, that part of your story of your life includes being homeless and then making it out of homelessness.

>>I look at that.

I look at that as a place I never want to go back to.

That's what I look at when I see that.

I don't want to have to g through that process ever again.

I don't wanna have to put m kids to that process ever again.

>>Krystel Knowles reporting.

Krystel' story is part of a collaborative initiative of independent local news outlets working towards a more informed and engaged Central Florida.

Nick Papantonis, let me start with you, and we'll start in Brevard.

The Melbourne City Council, in fact, this week voted to approv a new affordable housing project that paves the way for the closure of the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen, which many people in Melbourne will know about and we've featured here on the show.

WFTV has covered this story about the Daily Bread.

I mean, what do we know about this new development and the reasonin for closing that soup kitchen?

>>Yeah, I think the people in Melbourne will understand and not be unfamiliar with the fact that the Daily Bread has been a controversial entit for at least a little while now.

Soup kitchens generally not that controversial, but this one in Melbourne has long fel like the other towns in Brevard are dumping homeless people in Melbourne because of the Daily Bread, because they have the infrastructure.

And it means that Cocoa or Titusville does not necessarily have to do anything on their own.

And so it's been a goal of the city to close the Daily Bread for now - or for a while, excuse me.

And they are going to be building this housing development on the site that will provide low income and a pathway out of homelessness.

And what it basically does, it gives people housing and for at least on the city side, on the plus side, it closes what they've considered to be a long time problem.

>>And this is a problem facing many communities around the region.

So let's talk about that and we'll talk about the camping ban first.

Ryan, your outlet is part of the collaborative that I mentioned just now.

I wonder how from your reporting enforcement is looking at the moment at this point?

>>It' certainly gotten more aggressive since January 1st, when the when the statewide camping ban signed last year b the governor went into effect.

Just as an example from June of last year to December 31st of last year, the city of Orlando arrested about 19 people for camping.

In the month of January alone, they arrested 25.

Basically, what the state law requires is for a city not to allow somebody to sleep on public property.

That doesn't necessarily mean you have to arrest somebody, however, that that tends to be when you when you don't have shelter space to send somebody or if somebody refuses to go to a shelter, which does happen, you know, there's basically not another option.

So you end up with, in the mont of January 25 people arrested, in Februar that that number fell to seven.

I'm not really sure why that is.

Or really what the difference there is.

A lot of this is complaint driven.

The city receives complaints quite often.

>>Yeah.

>>Most of the time they're able to take care of the complaint and it's fin if they were not able to do so, the person who filed a complaint could file a lawsuit, which is the the threat that that has scared, you know, some local officials and whatnot in in Seminole.

We've seen recently as well they made their first arrest under their camping ban.

So certainly we are seeing people who are unsheltered, in jails across our area.

>>But at the same time, Orlando this week said it was going to dump plans for a homeless shelter, right, in SoDo.

We've discussed that on the program before.

Why did it make that decision?

Was it just community pushback?

>>Essentially, yes.

This was this was something that Mayor Buddy Dyer wante for the better part of a decade.

It's a county owned facility within the city that was formerly a work release center.

It's over across from the supervisor elections office on Kaley Avenue, kind of by I-4 for reference.

Basically, ever since this proposal came to light last year as part of this larger settlement between city and county over a bunch of issues, there has been pushback from a neighborhood about a mil to the east of this, facility, neighborhood called Wave View Park.

These people have been very adamant that they do not want this shelter in their area.

They fear that it will bring, you know, more people who are experiencing homelessness into their neighborhood or near their schools.

They think it will increase crime.

City officials have argued kind of to the contrary, that if you build a shelter, you're giving somebody without a shelter who's in you parks, a place they can go.

So last week, there was a contentious neighborhood meeting.

Commissioner Patty Sheehan, the district commissioner, was there.

After that meeting, she pulled her support, essentiall citing the neighborhood feedback and pushback that she thinks that kind of gone too far and was scared that it was going to take, you know, a year of approvals and whatnot in a year of this intense pushback.

And so, Mayor Dye announced on Monday of this week that they were going to pull that plan.

>>And Nick Papantonis you've covered the issue of trying to find locations for homeless shelters.

This is a debate, and a roadblock that you face in many communities, not just SoDo, right?

>>I challenge yo to find a neighborhood that says, yes we want a homeless shelter in our neighborhood.

Maybe you can get away with it if it's women and children.

But this shelter was a no barrier shelter.

Anybody could go and come as they pleased.

And that made the residents of Wade View Park which is a wealthier area that, frankly, does not have a larg homeless population right now.

That made them nervous.

And it's that not in my backyard feeling.

We all want to house the homeless, but you're going to have a problem.

They proposed 20 different sites around Orlando and there was if they went forward with one in Paramore, Paramore said we've already got a couple, put it somewhere else, and rightfully so.

And I guarantee you with, you know, step over the line of journalism and just give my opinion, I guarantee yo that each one of those 20 sites had they put forward with that would have gotten the same pushbac that this one would have gotten.

>>And that's a challenge, right?

We as a region, we know the math problem is you're short with, at least as of last year's math, about a thousand shelter beds across the three county area.

You know almost all of the shelter beds we have are in Paramore.

So you've got to find a place to put a place for people to live otherwise, or to sleep at least otherwise you're going to be putting them in jail.

And I think everybody broadly agrees that that that's not the best way to go about.

>>We already have that issue too, is - as of last year, before this new la even took effect, a third of the residents of the Orange County Jail were homeless.

So how are you going to try and if you're going to try and tackle that problem, which is going to save you taxpayer dollars and you're going to have to eventually push is going to have to eventually come to shove, you're going to have to fin a place for these people to go.

And it might wind up making some people unhappy about it.

>>Well I wonder what all this pushback means for Orlando' homelessness reduction efforts.

I mean, it has a goal, the city of of on homelessness reduction.

Where does that stand now?

>>Yeah.

So what they talked about before all of these things came to light was, reducing homelessness by 50% by 2027.

And so not having a shelte in SoDo that was, you know, ready to go almost something, having to build something from scratc and find a place for it is going to be really challenging.

Another issue, with the camping ban laws, are the increase in people going to jail, the increase in traffic stops and things of that nature and those costs associated with that.

But the big one for me, that I've seen is and one of the things tha people are concerned about that are trying to do something about this is the point in time count.

>>Yeah.

>>So the only way we know how many homeless peopl are out there on any given day, week, month is a yearly count that's done in January.

>>Yeah Just ramped up recently.

>>Yeah.

And so we'll see those numbers later this year.

One of the issues is that if people are concerned about being arrested under this new camping ban, they weren't going to be out there anyway.

They're going to be harder to find.

So when volunteers from these different groups go out to try to find people to do this survey, they can get to the people, usually in the shelters, but the unsheltered are going to be much harder to find.

And that affects fundin from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and that affects what potentially we could do - what the city could do in the future.

>>Steve, I think one thing that to point out before you end this segment is that Seminole County has a giant homeless population.

>>Yeah.

>>Osceol County has a number of people.

East Orange County, there are hundreds of people living in the woods.

And so one of the things that will need to happen is that these other communities are going to have to start having conversations of their own-- >>And they're part of that point in time count as well.

We're already that data.

>>We're already starting to see conversations start to shift in Orange County, and the need for a shelter in the east part of the county is starting to heat up, if more than it has been in the past.

>>Yeah.

>>Locations are being identified.

Don't know if it'll actually wind up going anywhere.

But as we talk about it I mean, we started with Brevard and everybody being dumped in Melbourne.

That's the problem that Orlando faces.

And Orlando is also arguin this is not only their problem to deal with.

>>Well we'll certainly be keeping an eye on it as part of our reporting collaborative as well.

A reminde you can find much more NewsNight content on our YouTube page and on our websit wucf.org/newsnight.

But that is all the time we hav for this week.

My thanks to Nick Papantonis, Ryan Gillespie, Nick Georgoudiou.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

Really appreciate your time today.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime for all of us here at NewsNight.

Take care and have a great week.