New Affordable Housing Plan: Businesses Will Help Pay for Employee Homes
In order to increase Florida mortgage loan activity in the state, numerous ideas are being floated around. Here’s a new one:
- Pushing employers to help pay for their workers’ homes.
It was an option proposed Tuesday by business leaders trying to create more affordable housing in Florida.
The Housing Leadership Council plans to explore the possibility of government requirements and incentives for businesses to help provide homes for their low- and middle-income employees. The group also called for finding ways to build more rental homes.
In addition, the coalition of business leaders plans to issue grades for local governments to show whether communities are making progress in providing homes for workers. This should also help the South Florida housing market rise out of its prolonged slump.
“We don’t really want to do it in a negative kind of way, but use it as a measuring stick,” said Art Menor, the housing council chairman. “We have got to focus on what our strengths are and what is doable.”
Other affordable housing measures
While more rental homes and housing help from businesses could increase the supply of affordable housing, passing out grades to local governments would not, Deputy County Administrator Verdenia Baker said. Baker has led the county’s effort to implement new affordable housing measures, which include requiring developers to limit some home prices.
The Housing Leadership Council, started by the Economic Council of Palm Beach County, unveiled a study in July that identified a need for creating 98,000 affordable homes during the next 20 years to avoid losing workers to less expensive areas.
The study said there was a $209,071 gap between what a typical Palm Beach County household could afford to buy and the median price of a house here. It laid out the need for creating more homes priced for households that make between $26,000 and $63,000 a year.
Since then, the housing market has cooled, but prices still remain out of reach for many of the workers county employers need, Menor said. The county’s median home price has hovered near $400,000. In October it was down to $365,600, according to the Florida Association of Realtors.
“You still have a huge gap,” Menor said.
The Palm Beach County Commission last month finalized new affordable housing rules requiring that about 16.5 percent of the homes at most new developments be priced between $164,000 and $304,000. The aim is to make it reasonable for almost anyone to apply for a Florida mortgage.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Many cities across the country have attacked the increasing demand for affordable housing by attempting to meet the need with new residential construction–generally at considerable cost subsidies to “make the numbers work.” Meanwhile the existing stock of housing is allowed to fall into disrepair. This is often a great loss in community character and architectural heritage; but, even more importantly: a sad waste of recyclable housing.
An alternative model, a Chicago based program that channels and supports the community’s latent entrepreneurial interest in real estate rehab. and investment, has accomplished since 2000 the rehabilitation of several thousand “distressed” single family and 2 flat properties. Upon completion all would qualify, by any measure, as Affordable Housing.
Importantly, this is a privately sponsored “for profit” program functioning entirely without public sponsorship or funding. (One wonders what might be accomplished with even minimal governmental suport.)
Where governmental agencies struggle with the considerable cost of publicly funded housing initiatives, thought might well be given to looking to such private/public “social enterprise” models for solutions. What has worked on Chicago’s south side will have applications in distressed neighborhoods elsewhere.