High Housing Costs Pose Problems For South Florida Universities’ Recruitment
How dire has the affordable housing situation in South Florida grown? It’s not just lower- and middle-income people who are starting to worry. Think college professors.
According to the Palm Beach Post, a crash course in Affordable Housing 101 will be on the schedules of some university presidents this fall as they consider building single-family homes, condos, even entire neighborhoods on campus for faculty members who can’t otherwise afford to live in Florida.
While public school teachers, firefighters and police officers have been the primary focus of concern as South Florida seeks housing affordability solutions, universities are beginning to worry about their ability to recruiting experienced, elite professors with last year’s average faculty salary of a meager $62,582.
A good living, sure. But that level of pay can qualify a person for a Florida home loan of around $190,000, not even enough to get a condo in many South Florida markets. Home prices in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties are currently in the high $300,000s, according to the Florida Housing Coalition.
Add in the rising cost of insurance that has doubled and tripled in some areas since 2004, and houses soon become out of reach for faculty, new hires from out of state in particular.
“Candidates come here for interviews, clear their throats uncomfortably and then say, ‘What can you tell me about the expensive housing situation in Sarasota?’” said Mike Michalson, president of New College of Florida. “It used to be as long as you didn’t have to be smack-dab on the water, you could get a nice three-bedroom ranch (home) from $85,000 to $130,000.”
The median price of a Sarasota home last month? $326,800.
At universities in the most expensive areas, including Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, and Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, officials are beginning to brainstorm ideas to find housing for professors and staff.
At the private Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, school officials have created a program to help some new hires with down payments on homes. The university provides ample down payment assistance, and in turn, if the person stays for five years, the school forgives the loan.
Public universities have greater restrictions on how they can spend tax dollars, however. State University Chancellor Mark Rosenberg is studying how a new housing law in Florida could help universities. He plans to have a report ready for the Board of Governors this fall.
Without a solution, officials fear education quality at state schools will be compromised as they pick less experienced candidates and fill vacancies with adjunct professors. It has already happened at FIU and New College.
When FIU officials identified the best candidate for a dean position living in Rochester, N.Y., they wooed her with a $20,000 raise and Miami sunshine. But she couldn’t find a suitable home under $500,000 dollars near the school, she decided to stay in New York. Along similar lines, at New College, a reference librarian from Illinois accepted a position and began looking for a home.
“He was far and away our first choice. But then he had the sobering realization that the value of his home in Illinois wasn’t near enough to buy something here, and he very reluctantly pulled out,” Michalson said.
The California State University system, which has 23 campuses, was going through the same problem. So it entered the home-development business.
About six campuses now have faculty and staff housing ranging from entire neighborhoods of single- and multi-family homes to rental apartments. David Rosso, chief of land use planning for CSU, said that in a typical neighborhood near a California school, a two-bedroom bungalow could go for $550,000.
The same money can get a 2,000-square-foot, on-campus home with a garage and several bedrooms. Special financing plans can be worked out so an employee doesn’t need a down payment, either. There are definitive pros and cons to campus living, however.
A faculty member buying a CSU home doesn’t own the land but owns all of the improvements to the home. When the home is sold, the price must equal the initial price, inflated only by the increase in the Consumer Price Index and the value of capital improvements. Also, the home cannot be sold on the open market, only to other school employees on waiting lists.
“Aside from that, you’ll also have every problem you have in any small community — barking dogs, the neighbor’s barbecue, street lights are out, cars are parked on the stree. It’s definitely a different enterprise than student housing or anything else the university does,” Rosso said.
In June, FAU held a workshop to discuss “Athletic Innovation Village,” a proposed development that would include a stadium, shops, restaurants, dorms and condos for non-students. The average faculty salary at FAU was $62,037 last year, while the median home price in Boca Raton is $457,500.
Even as Florida home loans become harder to attain, prices have yet to show signs of coming down from their lofty levels. Trustees at FAU originally were opposed to the idea of getting into the housing business, but given the current state of the Florida housing market, Board of Trustees Chairman Sherry Plymale said she would be open to the discussion if the homes were geared toward faculty and staff members.
“It’s a huge issue and it’s going to have to be addressed in some way,” Plymale said.
