One Plan to Soothe Affordable Housing Woes in Southwest Florida: Back Off

In the past year and a half, the issue of housing affordability has become one of the biggest talking points in the Southwest Florida housing market, and the state’s entire business community.

Numerous plans have been proposed to make Florida mortgage payments more affordable for residents of cities such as Naples, where home prices have ballooned by over 100 percent since the onset of this decade.

But in one man’s opinion - as expressed in his letter to the Naples Daily News, which appears below - the best way for state and local government to remedy the affordable housing crisis is to get out of the way.

If we let free market economics control the prices, they’ll eventually come back to earth, or employers will increase salaries so more people can make the Florida home loan payments on time. That’s what capitalism is about, right? Certainly in his opinion. Here’s the letter:

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Just what is “affordable housing” ?

Does it have a definition? Everyone throws the term around, but do they know what they are talking about? Does it apply to a specific geographic region — the Naples housing market, just Collier County, even all of Southwest Florida?

I keep hearing that teachers, nurses, firemen, etc., can’t afford to live where they work. Does anyone think the people who work in Beverly Hills live in Beverly Hills? I’d love to live in Port Royal — not my small condo seven miles from the Gulf of Mexico because I can’t afford Port Royal.

In Chicago, hundreds of thousands of people live 40-60 miles from the city because they can get more housing at a better cost. Why should this not be true in Naples?

Is every 25-year-old entitled to a four-bedroom house with a pool? Is an apartment or condo no longer acceptable as starter housing?

If we keep government out of this issue, market forces will work just fine. They are already beginning to. If nurses, etc., decide that it isn’t worth the long drive to work in Naples or elsewhere in Collier or Lee County, pretty soon there will be a shortage.

When that happens, hospitals, home builders and schools will have to increase salaries to attract employees, the costs of which they will pass along to the residents.

On the other hand, if we let government get its sticky fingers on this issue — well, some may remember what happened during the gas embargo in the 1970s when government froze gas prices to make gas “affordable.”
Nobody could get gas.