How many families actually got help?

Umbralio · Official SHIP and CAPER reports from local governments, read on November 9, 2026

Public programs that help people buy a home in South Florida announce millions every year. What local governments reported actually delivering, in their most recent official report, is this: up to 355 households received homebuyer assistance across the 10 jurisdictions that publish their results, with $11,564,580.51 disbursed and verified in the rows whose report publishes a dollar figure. Of those households, 64 sit in reports that count the family but do not publish the dollars: the money figure is a floor, not a rounded total.

We say “up to” because Miami Beach may count up to 3 buyers twice: the 3 in its CAPER (HOME funds) and the 7 in its SHIP report come from separate reports, and its CAPER says it combines resources “including SHIP.” If they are the same buyers, the total is 352.

This is not a single uniform year: it is the most recent report each government published about itself, with its fiscal year stated in every row.

The figures, jurisdiction by jurisdiction

Homebuyer assistance = direct financial assistance to buy (down payment assistance, second mortgage, or a homebuyer loan), per each report’s official table. It excludes rehabilitation, rental assistance, and third-party construction.

* Miami-Dade’s CAPER goal is for homeowner housing added with HOME funds, not for direct assistance; its table carries no homebuyer-assistance row, and the county itself declares its 2024 data incomplete. Its buyer assistance runs through SHIP — the first row of this table.

One county carries almost everything

Miami-Dade accounts for 244 of the 355 households (68.7%) and $8,805,000 of the verified dollars (76.1%): three of every four homebuyer-assistance dollars in this picture came out of the county’s SHIP program. In its own series, down payment assistance alone rose from 186 households in FY2022/2023 to 239 in FY2023/2024, plus 5 more households through second mortgages.

Second in households is Palm Beach County, with 49 buyers in FY2024-2025 (HOME 6, SHIP 43 across its three strategies) against a goal of 41: it met the year at 119.51%. Its own report gives the figure two ways: “Thirty-nine (39)” in one paragraph and “Forty-nine (49)” in two others. We use 49 because it is the figure its program breakdown adds up to. Its five-year plan, however, stands at 214 of 1,100 households (19.45%): the year is met; the plan is not.

The zeros are also the story

• North Miami set itself a goal of 10 buyers with federal HOME funds and closed at 0. Its CAPER explains it in one sentence: the city could not assist first-time homebuyers “due to the cost of housing.” With state SHIP money in the closeout period it helped exactly 1 household, with $40,000.
• Pembroke Pines reports 0 of 5 buyers in its PY2023 CAPER —and 0 of 25 across its plan to date— with $0 of HOME spending that year. Its last published SHIP report (FY2021/2022) records 1 household and $10,000.
• Sunrise spent all of its ownership SHIP money on rehabilitation (38 households, $862,261.22) and $0 on purchase assistance in the FY2022/2023 closeout; through federal HOME funds, its CAPER does count 6 buyers in FY2023.
• Deerfield Beach received no SHIP funding in FY2020/2021: its closeout report sits at $0, with zero lifetime purchase-assistance loans declared. Its FY2023 CAPER, by contrast, reports 12 buyers and $596,426.35 across CDBG, HOME and SHIP, with an internal discrepancy we declare below (its funding breakdown adds to 11, not 12).

On the other side, Pompano Beach doubled its federal goal: 8 buyers with HOME funds against a goal of 4, plus 2 through SHIP ($75,000), in the program year closed in September 2025 — the freshest report in this whole picture.

The biggest gap: the City of Miami

The area’s largest city is not in the table. Its annual SHIP report and its CAPER could not be located in open publication: its document portal holds the plans (LHAP), not the results. Miami Gardens, Homestead, Miramar and Fort Lauderdale published no locatable report either (for Fort Lauderdale only the FY2013/2014 report remains archived). Hollywood is not missing: its purchase assistance runs through Broward County and is counted in the county’s row. What is not published is not estimated: it stays out of the sum, and it is stated.

Methodology and limits

• Sources: 17 official reports (Florida Housing SHIP annual reports and the CAPERs that entitlement communities file with HUD), downloaded from each government’s official site and read in full. Every figure in this piece exists in the published dataset with its report, table, and source wording. A second person checked the figures against the official PDFs.
• What counts: direct financial assistance to a household to buy its home. Excluded: rehabilitation, rental assistance, foreclosure prevention, developer construction, and amounts committed but not yet spent.
• The sum never mixes two years of the same program: one row per jurisdiction, program, and year, always the most recent. Fiscal years differ across governments (SHIP: July–June with a later closeout; CAPER: October–September, except Miami-Dade, January–December), and each row states its own. The Miami-Dade FY2022/2023 row is in the dataset only for the year-over-year comparison, outside the sum.
• Form status: several reports carry an “Unsubmitted” stamp on the form the government itself published; Broward and Pembroke Pines are marked “Approved.” The figures are those of the official published version, with the stamp declared in the dataset.
• Possible double count, declared: Miami Beach reports 3 buyers with HOME and 7 with SHIP in separate reports; its CAPER combines resources “including SHIP,” so up to 3 may be the same buyers. That is why the total is “up to 355” (352 at least).
• Contradictory figure in the source, declared: Palm Beach County’s CAPER says 39 buyers in one paragraph and 49 in two; the breakdown (HOME 6 + SHIP 43) adds to 49. The amounts it attaches to that row ($783,448 HOME and $8,001,001 SHIP) are strategy funds in the plan, not the year’s disbursement: so its row contributes households, not dollars.
• Deerfield Beach, inconsistent report: its FY2023 CAPER tables declare 12 households and $596,426.35; its funding breakdown adds to 11 (CDBG 1, HOME 4, SHIP 6), and one narrative sentence mentions a single SHIP household. We use the tables.
• Pembroke Pines: its SHIP report declares $10,000 with the units cell left blank; the one household comes from the detail and the average cost in the same report.
• Other declared gaps: no report of their own was located for Lauderhill, Davie, Tamarac, Plantation, Cooper City, North Lauderdale or Lauderdale Lakes (several operate through Broward County or its HOME consortium). Palm Beach County’s FY2021/2022 SHIP report returns “File Not Found” at its official address (its SHIP is measured in the CAPER), and Pompano Beach’s own SHIP report could not be read (it is measured in its CAPER). West Palm Beach is out because it has no purchase assistance of its own in the Tracker.
• Aggregate figures only: no individual household data enters this piece, even where a source report includes it in its appendices.

The full data, to download

The jurisdiction × program × fiscal year table, with each figure’s report, table, source wording, and official URL, as CSV. Free to use and cite (CC BY 4.0), crediting Umbralio.

Umbralio checks the down payment assistance programs in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach against their official sources every week and publishes their verified status in the Assistance Tracker.

Nelson Paredes · REALTOR® · One Stop Realty Center Inc · FL Lic. SL3654769