City Council blocks effort to tap new housing trust fund for developer loan

Jacksonville City Council members blocked an effort Tuesday to pull nearly $3 million from the newly minted affordable housing trust to pay for a loan for the proposed Tori Meadows apartments. The $39 million project by developer Vestcor Inc. will be affordable housing, but some city lawmakers appeared caught by surprise that the council s Finance Committee wanted to pull from the $4.9 million trust fund intended to help spur affordable single family homebuilding a month after it was included in the city budget. “I have never seen in my seven years here where something passes in the budget, and then two weeks later we’re changing it,” council member Ron Salem said. “That concerns me, just on the surface of doing that …. And I think in particular with the amount of people who got involved in this particular issue, I think it’s a bad look for the council.” The council did, ultimately, approve Ordinance 2026-0752 but without determining how the city will pay the loan when it’