Big Price Tags Make Palm Beach County, Martin County Contenders For New Grants

The gap between home prices and residents’ buying power is wider in Martin County than all but four other counties in Florida, a dismal fact that has made it a top contender for part of $50 million in new housing incentives.

According to today’s Palm Beach Post, the median sale price of a home in Martin County home was $339,900 last year, $182,550 more than a family of four earning the median annual income of $52,450 could afford, according to Florida Housing Finance Corp. figures discussed Monday during a meeting on affordable housing in Stuart.

In Palm Beach County, which boasted the state’s third-biggest gap between buying power and home prices, the numbers are even more bleak.

A family of four earning the median $62,100 a year comes up about $210,500 short of the median $396,800 home, according to FHFC’s formula.

With that amount of money standing in between a resident and buying a home, Florida home loans are not just a stretch — they’re out of the question.

Both jurisdictions beat out Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which ranked sixth and seventh, respectively, and huge disparities between area home prices and wages mean they will get top billing for a slice of money from the new Comprehensive Workforce Housing Initiative Pilot Program.

The program, which the state legislature approved this year, aims to hand out $5 million to public-private partnerships in 10 counties. To win a grant, the groups must come up with strategies for providing housing for workers who earn 130 percent of the average wage — a slightly better-off class than is served by existing state and federal housing programs.

In Martin County, a developer approached leaders about vying for one of the grants to build a 50-unit townhouse project in its planned 2,200-home Quillen development in Indiantown, according to Nicki Van Vonno, the county’s growth management director.

Other groups including the city of Stuart also are considering applying for the grant by the December 15 deadline, she said.

“We’re going to support any application that comes along,” Van Vonno said.

Cash infusions could help alleviate the South Florida housing market pain, but a combination of approaches will be needed to solve the problem, said Stan Fitterman, senior technical adviser for the Florida Housing Coalition, during the Stuart presentation.

He pointed to programs such as community land trusts, which Delray Beach and 13 other communities in the state are developing to create affordable housing on publicly owned land.

The Florida Housing Coalition has been working with Martin County since June to develop a housing plan, and it coordinated Monday’s meeting with hopes of teaching local businesses about employer-assisted housing programs. But only a few businesses showed up.

Gladys Schneider, technical adviser for the housing coalition, said she invited more than 40 of the county’s top employers, but only about 20 people attended — many of them government workers.

One exception was Seacoast National Bank’s Teresa Idzior, a credit risk manager who pointed to the urgency of the housing situation.

“If we don’t start solving the problem with the price of housing … we’re going to end up with a bunch of companies with no workers,” Idzior said.

“Or with no companies,” Fitterman added.