Editorial Laments Housing Crisis, Says Palm Beach County Must Act to Preserve Lifestyle
In case you haven’t heard, Palm Beach County is experiencing a housing crisis.
And it’s not just among people who thought they going to make a killing by being a real estate investor, and now have one of the dozen homes on the block that just won’t sell. No, what the Palm Beach Post is talking about in this case is what happens when we imagine that a small parcel of swampland is worth $500,000, then hope to sell it to someone who hasn’t gotten a decent raise in years.
The Florida Housing Coalition put it this way, at least. Since 2002, the median home price in the Sunshine State has gone up 77 percent, while incomes have gone up — wait for it — only 1.4 percent. In other words, to put it bluntly, people can’t afford it.
“The workforce is ‘priced out’ of the housing market, causing communities to suffer from a lack of people relied upon to make every community viable,” the Housing Coalition said in a report. “These people include teachers, teachers aids, nursing assistants, medical technologists, retail workers, government employees, emergency services providers and law enforcement. These individuals are the backbone of any community, but without a place they can afford, have extreme difficulty living in the very communities they serve.”
Yes, things would be bad without these people and people in Palm Beach seem to recognize that. But in Boca Raton, the list of essential people on the lower end of the salary scale is even greater than in other areas. If, for example, the current trend were to continue, Boca Raton could become a virtual no-man’s land and the paradise that draws people to the area in the first place could be put in serious jeopardy.
To see how bad this crisis is, check out the housing group’s official Priced Out Report, which spells out its findings on the high cost of housing in 18 different Florida cities.
For the southern end of Palm Beach County, take a look at West Palm Beach. Even with the rising Florida home loan rates seen in recent months, the median price has held steady at $390,100 while the average two-bedroom, two-bath apartment rents for $1,208 a month. One can check off various jobs on the site to see what it would take for somebody to buy or rent a home in West Palm Beach.
If you work in the kitchen at one of the area’s fine restaurants, you are probably making around $20,000 annually. That means you would qualify for a mortgage between $55,000 and $60,000. You’d have to then drop a fortune for a down payment, or rent, which would probably require you to work around 100 hours per week at that salary.
Can Boca Raton and Delray Beach continue to function without these restaurant workers and many people like them? Many think not.
Even an elementary school teacher in the area, making an average salary of $43,763 a year, would qualify for just a $138,541 mortgage, meaning he or she would need almost double that amount in a down payment or other assistance in order to buy an average home.
Something in this South Florida housing market has to give. The good life isn’t the good life when only people on the high end of the economic pyramid can afford it. Unless there is a change, the surgeons and the lawyers will have to eat at home, park their own cars, home-school their children and form a white-collar, volunteer fire department.
