Flagler County Plans Affordable Housing Units

If all goes well, in the next few years the Flagler County school district could begin offering its new teachers a huge benefit.

That, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, would be the chance to buy a low-cost, single-family home from the school district.

The effort comes as school districts and municipalities across the state are struggling to keep teachers, police officers and firefighters who are getting priced out of the Florida housing market.

Complaints of this housing crisis prompted the state Legislature in May to create a program that will provide financial assistance to localities that build low-cost, affordable housing for essential service workers.

Flagler’s school district is hoping to get a share of that $50 million pie.

In particular, the district is hoping it will be able to use a 30-acre swath of land it owns in Palm Coast’s Seminole Woods for a subdivision with up to 90 homes.

The land is unsuitable for a school, but it could be the ideal setting to qualify for the new state program. School districts can apply for grants of up to $5 million that they can use to build low-cost housing. The funds are limited to high-growth areas where the median price of real estate is above what’s considered affordable for most families.

David Herkalo, director of the Gainesville-based Neighborhood Housing & Development Corporation, said Flagler County has a good chance at getting this newfound assistance because most of its residents earn an average salary of $48,650.

The most a family with that income can afford is a house costing about $145,950, yet the median home price in Flagler is $215,000. That kind of gap is not easily bridged, and will be made even more difficult if Florida mortgage rates continue to rise in the coming months and years.

At a meeting Tuesday, the five-member School Board voted to pay $10,000 to Herkalo’s corporation to survey the district’s land and design plans for the housing. In conjunction with the school district, he now plans to draw up an application for state funding that is due by December 15.

As part of that application, the corporation is estimating the cost to build a subdivision of single-family homes priced lower for teachers and other essential service personnel in the county, such as police officers, firefighters and bus drivers.

Still in the works is a concept plan detailing how the district will keep the home prices low. But she noted that other entities, such as University of California at Los Angeles, have created similar developments for their professors. In Tampa, school board members are considering whether to build apartments above a parking garage owned by the district.

Flagler will look at those models to create its own, officials say.