Northeast Florida Officials Meet to Discuss Affordable Housing Shortage, Solutions

Non-profit workers filled 26 percent of the room. The same percentage said they made more than $125,000 annually, and 43 percent of the room said they owned their home for 3-10 years. All of the people gathered at the St. Augustine Ballroom in the St. Johns County Convention Center last week were there for a reason: to help find a solution to the growing workforce housing shortage and crisis.

For nine years, St. Johns County and the Northeast Florida Regional Council have gathered pertinent parties from Baker, Clay, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, Putnam and St. Johns counties to discuss a different topic each year.

This year, it’s affordable housing. More than 600 people heard from more than 25 speakers on the issue that has become a major problem in the North Florida real estate market, leading officials to take greater action than ever before in finding a solution.

The goal: preserving a bright economic future for the Sunshine State by brainstorming and providing the best practices. The meeting hopes to serve as a springboard for the NFRC Affordable Workforce Housing Task Force and ultimately implement regional approaches — and regional responses to solve the issue.

“It’s a concerted effort between all the non-profits, government agencies and builders to curb the flow and try to provide housing. These people are the makeup of our society. When it gets to the point where only the wealthy can afford a home, something has got to give,” said J.D. Collins, a Florida home builder.

Dr. James Nicholas, economist and Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Florida, provided some interesting figures.

• Economically active households are those with one or more persons in the labor force.
• The average economically active household makes $47,438 annually, and with that household income, can afford a $159,934 house.
• However, the average sales price of an existing single-family home in Northeast Florida is $213,500.
• A surprising 61 percent of those average households earn less than $47,000 per year, and on average, they earn $31,000.
• As a result, those people can find affordable housing less and less frequently — they can only swing a $106,615 home, less than half of what the average house costs.
• The average economically active household needs to earn $62,276 a year in order to afford a home at the region’s current median price.

“The market is responding to demand and that’s the problem. There’s no way that it’s local demand driven. It lies in the non-local demand and it’s the local residents who are squeezed out of the market,” Nicholas said.

Nicholas said the No. 1 need in a community is workers, which are also the largest cost. The No. 1 economic development issue is affordable housing. With a high rate of turnover in the workforce, locals are further squeezed out of the Florida housing market.

The external demands of vacation, retirement and a five-year surge in investment property / vacation home purchases have further compounded the strain for land and driven prices upward, squeezing the middle class out of the market in many cases.

Kerri Stewart of the Northeast Florida Regional Planning Council (NEFRPC) said the city of Jacksonville gets more money than the other counties because of its size and the dedication of Florida Housing Authority funds and the Affordable Housing Task Force introduced by former City Council President Kevin Hyde in May.

The boom that has engulfed the state since 2000 is not just hurting South Florida residents anymore. Stewart says in order to help the Northeast region, the board has the process of getting federal and state grant money down to a science. However, those organizations work on their own schedule and make it difficult for the task force to move quickly.

“But it does work. We’ve established the funding cycle and we know the amount of money we need, but now we have to decide what we can do as a task force,” she said.

Jacksonville’s task force is working with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to help identify and design infill housing. The task force is also looking to preserve older housing. As the housing stock ages, the task force has realized that rehab projects need to grow. With Florida home mortgage costs getting more expensive, buyers are stretching themselves even further. This initiative aims to help them achieve the American dream of homeownership.