More than 500 people from the community attended the ICARE Nehemiah Assembly on Monday, April 7, 2025. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on April 8, 2025 at 4:22 pm
Free local news and info, in your inbox at 6 a.m. M-F. Sign up for the Jacksonville Today newsletter.
Despite having a master’s degree and a long career in education, Laura Bayer says the cost of housing means she lives “one paycheck to paycheck away from disaster.”
That sometimes has her feeling insignificant, despite having a full-time administrative position at a local school, she said.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
Bayer spoke Monday night at a crowded meeting of the Interfaith Coalition for Action, Reconciliation and Empowerment, known as ICARE.
The annual meeting of the 29-year-old group celebrated Sheriff T.K. Waters’ success in lowering the city’s murder rate but also questioned Mayor Donna Deegan about the issue of more affordable housing.
Bayer said it is hard when she sometimes forgoes doctor’s appointments so she can pay for other needs like her home.
Jacksonville Today thanks our sponsors. Become one.
“If something were to happen, if I were to lose my job or have a medical emergency, we would have to leave Jacksonville to move in with my family,” Bayer told the crowd. “I want to be able to teach and work in education, to raise my family. And this isn’t happening. But I also know that my story is really not that uncommon. So I am here because I have hope that together, we can make some changes.”
Deegan said she is working on finding new ways to help people like Bayer have a safe, stable and clean roof over their heads.
“I hate to hear that — that’s what happens — we become less healthy because people are struggling to make ends meet and they can’t afford other supplies,” Deegan told the crowd of 500-plus. “Jacksonville’s housing inventory is struggling to keep pace with our fast growth. We are short by more than 40,000 affordable housing units, and the Jacksonville Housing Authority’s waiting list for low-income housing has more than 27,000 people on it — a five-year wait and currently closed, it has become so large.”
ICARE’s mission
ICARE is made up of hundreds of clergy, citizens and staff at 38 Jacksonville churches, synagogues and other congregations. They use what they call their “collective people power” to push the city’s elected officials to find countywide solutions to problems such as crime, low graduation rates and homelessness.
This time, the group’s 27th annual Nehemiah Action Assembly was held at Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church to address two specific community issues: the affordable housing crisis and crime.
ICARE officials say that one in four Jacksonville residents who rent homes spend half or more of their income on housing. They also say that Jacksonville has only half of the affordable homes needed for those families. So their proposal for the mayor was to push for an affordable housing trust fund.
In 2024, Deegan proposed a $10 million affordable housing seed fund in a public-private partnership to assist developers like nonprofit Ability Housing acquire local property so they could erect affordable rental housing.
Deegan said the loan fund would have attracted $30 million in investments for affordable housing, but City Council’s Finance Committee removed the item from the mayor’s proposed budget.
On Monday , Deegan said 50% of Jacksonville’s renters and 22% of homeowners spend more than 50% of their income on housing. That means they do not have enough to spend on other necessities like food and transportation.
She said the city made some progress with $6 million invested in new affordable housing initiatives and “we will not give up.”
“Our team has been working with the council to add more funding and pieces of our homeless plan since then, and we are discussing the best path forward on the housing fund this year,” she said. “Part of my commitment to you tonight is we will work with ICARE on what the city’s housing trust fund looks like and how we can work together to launch it.”
Deegan agreed to meet again with ICARE officials within 60 days to work on the affordable housing trust fund, including determining a dedicated funding source “that works for our community.”
Jacksonville’s murder rate
The other issue of the night focused on the work that Waters and the Sheriff’s Office have done to reduce the city’s murder rate.
According to data from the Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Jacksonville’s number of murders went from a high of 140 in 2020 and remained close to that for years until falling by more than 50% from 2023 to 2024 — from 124 to 59.
Waters credited some of the drop in murders to the Sheriff’s Office’s expanded Gang Investigations Unit and its 9-year-old Group Violence Intervention program, which does face-to-face talks between officers and gang members to offer help getting out of that way of life.
“It will be here and enforced till the day I am out of office, whether that is two years from now, or if I am fortunate to serve another four years,” the sheriff said.
So far this year, the Sheriff’s Office’s homicide database displays 18 homicides, a good sign, Waters said after the meeting.
“The trend continues. We are probably a little bit under where we were last year at this time, and we are 17% down on crime total,” he said.
ICARE has consistently pushed the Sheriff’s Office to partner with the National Network for Safe Communities to combat crime, but Waters has declined to do so. ICARE also lobbied the Sheriff’s Office to adopt adult civil citations instead of arrests for some first-time offenders. Waters and the previous sheriff did not agree to that either.
After the two-hour assembly, the Rev. Adam Gray, ICARE’s executive board secretary, said the group is excited that the Sheriff’s Office is “responding to the voices of the community” and working with them. Now ICARE hopes that Waters will come to see their belief in adult civil citations versus arrests, “to save money, to keep arrest records off first-time offenders,” Gray said.
“We have heard the sheriff’s opposition to this, but it is our job as ICARE to continue to bring the concerns and desires of the community to our elected officials,” Gray said. “He is accountable to the people — that’s what he did when he ran for sheriff. So we will continue to hold him accountable and advocate for solutions we think will make things better.”
ICARE will hold its next Community Problems Assembly at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 at Christ the King Catholic Church at 742 Arlington Road. For more information about the organization, go to icarejax.org.
