Jacksonville business owner under investigation got free land from the city after it implemented new vetting process

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The failure of the City of Jacksonville’s Surplus Property Donation Program is raising a lot of questions.

After an Inspector General report revealed that 95% of the people who got free land to build affordable homes never did, the News4JAX I-TEAM is looking into who the grantees are.

The city gave away 174 parcels of land in 2020 and most recently in 2023, it gave away another 41 properties. The city did not give away land in 2021 or 2022.

In combing through the list of grantees from 2020 and 2023, one name stuck out in particular: “J White Community Development Corporation.”

State records show the not-for-profit is registered to Janay White, a Jacksonville entrepreneur who was the focus of an I-TEAM investigation last November and is currently under investigation by the State Attorney’s Office.

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She was accused of real estate and investment fraud after getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from her investors who saw minimal returns.

Her title vice president is listed as Henry Manns, a man who was convicted of trafficking cocaine in 1988. Manns was considered “Jacksonville’s first crack cocaine kingpin,” according to the Florida Times-Union.

A new process to vet applicants of the City of Jacksonville Surplus Donation program was rolled out late last year after a report from the Inspector General discovered a concerning lack of oversight.

Out of 62 people who got free property from the city in 2020, 59 of them violated the donation agreement. 23 properties were sold for profit.

“The 2019 legislation created a lot of problems disturbing to me and my colleagues,” Ron Salem, the Chair of the City Council Finance Committee, said Tuesday. “I’m glad we’ve corrected it but we need to make sure we’re building houses out there.”

The Jacksonville City Council Finance Committee asked Travis Jeffrey, the city’s Chief of Housing and Community Development, for answers on what went wrong Tuesday.

He explained that the original donation agreements did not specifically prevent the free land from being sold for profit in the future and that the city did not vet applicants well enough.

That’s why a new “stringent” application process was created last year.

· Applicants could only get three properties instead of five

· Need past development experience (two properties in the last 5 years)

· Proof of financial capability

“Once they apply, we vet them. Before we actually donate them, we have them sign stringent donation agreements now,” Jeffrey said to the council.

It appears White applied for the land donation program and was vetted through the new process in 2023. White received two different plots of land valued at about $14,000.

News4JAX drove by to find them overgrown on Wednesday.

“In November of ’23 we donated another 41 properties under the new process,” Jeffrey said. “All of these have donation agreements, all of them went through the new application process, we’re receiving quarterly reports on each one of them and they’re all moving nicely now. The new process is working.”

News4JAX reached out to the city of Jacksonville and asked how “J White Community Development Corp” was approved as a grantee in 2023 and whether the individuals who receive land donations go through any type of background check.

A spokesperson for the city said that at the time of approval, J White Community Development met all the criteria as an applicant. Her application in August of last year was well before the fraud allegations were made public and before Manns became affiliated with the organization. The city provided News4JAX with documentation showing that Manns was only recently listed as a VP of the nonprofit.