Affordable Housing Project Underway in Broward County

So maybe you can’t afford a Florida mortgage loan of five digits. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a fair share of properties from which to choose. Broward County is finally doing something about this,

Almost 500 low-income families will have new apartments in the area over the next two years under the largest construction program the county’s Housing Authority has undertaken in three decades.

Housing officials are tearing down decaying projects in Hollywood and Deerfield Beach, giving about 300 families there rental vouchers to find new homes. Rebuilding on the sites will replace their units and add about 200 more apartments to the Broward housing market supply.

The affordable housing mission: Help ALL Florida mortgage seekers

“I grew up here, so it’s good to see them improving the place,” said Kelvin Wilson, 22, whose family is one of the few still waiting to move out of Schooler-Humphries in Deerfield Beach. “I’ve seen it at the worst it could get when it was a drug-infested neighborhood, and I hear when they build the new homes, it should really boost the area.”

The project is very much underway, as local officials don’t want lower-income Florida home buyers to only have the FHA as an option. The first tenants should begin moving into the new Crystal Lakes apartments in Hollywood’s Liberia community in November.

Demolition of Schooler-Humphries should begin within the next month, with the new Tallman Pines complex opening there in March 2008. The additional Highland Gardens units should open in summer 2008 as well.

The Housing Authority had not added any new units since the early 1990s, but decided four years ago to use state tax incentives to partner with private developers and launch the major expansion now under way. It’s aimed those often overlooked in the Florida home mortgage process.

“We’ve never been involved in this much production of new housing at any one time before, but there was a need here for affordable housing and we had land and projects that were obsolete,” said Kevin Cregan, executive director of the Housing Authority. “This was a win-win because we are removing some very distressed properties and expanding the number of apartments available.”

The lack of apartments for families with low to moderate incomes has been one of the chief problems created by the Broward’s recent real estate boom.

State of Broward housing

According to a study released earlier this year by the Broward Housing Partnership, the county lost 22,000 rentals to condo conversions between 2003 and 2005. The number of new apartments under construction also dropped dramatically and isn’t close to meeting the almost 6,000 units that housing experts say must be added each year to keep pace with the growing population.

While the number of apartments available is shrinking - and people are shying away from Florida home loans - rental rates have been escalating just like the price of single-family homes and condos. According to the study, the average lease for a two-bedroom apartment rose to $1,122 in 2005 from $750 a month in 2000. That requires a household income of $45,000 a year, but the median income of renters in Broward is less than $32,000. The problem is apparent.

“The most critical piece of the affordable housing crisis is what has happened in terms of rentals,” said Jim Carras, president of the Housing Partnership. “Broward County is a low-wage-earner county, so even if you can get housing affordable to someone making $40,000 or $50,000 a year to buy, there are still many, many people who can’t afford that.”

The new Housing Authority units will be available to people making no more than 60 percent of the area’s median income. That 60 percent figure would be $36,360 for a family of four or $29,100 for a couple. It’s a major step in assisting lower-income buyers that want to take out a Florida mortgage loan, but haven’t been able to price it correctly in the past.

Hopefully, others counties will follow this lead. We applaud Broward for recognizing that not all applications for Florida home loans are sent in by those in the highest income bracket.