Sarasota Housing

State help for Sarasota housing

Tax credits will fund rebuilding of Janie Poe and other complexes

By CATHY ZOLLO
cathy.zollo@heraldtribune.com

A state award of tax credits Friday to the Sarasota Housing Authority will generate about $11 million to tear down and rebuild 400 dilapidated public housing apartments.

The tax credits from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation will be used to fund the first 86 units of housing that will eventually be an entirely revamped Janie Poe.

Janie Poe is one of four sites that will be razed and rebuilt by New Jersey-based Michaels Development Co. The two-story apartments, built in the 1970s, are wracked with problems.

For more than a decade, the Housing Authority has been trying to get the money to rebuild. But past efforts failed because of dwindling federal grants and poor management from a Housing Authority ultimately taken over by the federal government.

"Having been born and raised in Sarasota, having been raised as a teenager in public housing, having lived in public housing as a single mom, having gone through each of the HOPE VI (grant application) processes, I didn't think this day would ever come," said Carolyn Mason, a board member of Newtown Front Porch and former mayor of Sarasota. More HERE