Flagler County Residents Seek Affordable Housing Answers
Teresa Brown can’t find a home she can afford in Palm Coast. The credit manager for a paint supply company in Daytona Beach wants to put the $815 she pays in monthly rent toward a home of her own.
Brown has rented a Palm Coast home for three years, likes the city a lot and wants to be close to her elderly parents. But finding a home that won’t overextend her budget hasn’t been easy.
“It’s very hard to find something affordable,” she said. “There’s nothing reasonable.”
A city-commissioned study completed by the Florida Survey Research Center at the University of Florida-Gainesville gave city officials a similar message.
The study - based on a survey of 1,598 workers of 15 local companies and agencies - was released this month and found that Palm Coast lacks affordable housing for purchase or rent.
The problem is especially challenging for low-income workers like retail and day-care workers but also affects professional and moderate-income would-be Florida mortgage seekers like Brown.
Flagler County’s median income is $42,700.
Jennifer Ingels, a senior planner for Palm Coast, said the study was conducted to determine whether the city is meeting its comprehensive goal to provide adequate and affordable housing.
Despite the recent cooling in the Florida housing market, the challenge of finding affordable housing is still ongoing, Ingels said.
“Now things are a little bit different because housing prices are coming down, but that still doesn’t mean we won’t have the problem again because we will,” she said.
According to the study, multi-family rentals would give many low-to-moderate income workers the “stepping stone” to homeownership.
Affordable rental housing could serve as a long-term solution for residents who have extremely low and very low incomes, the study said.
The city could employ several strategies to create affordable housing, such as partnering with developers to create affordable rental housing, working with Flagler County to use available state resources and identify local employers willing to assist workers with down payments or deposits.
The survey’s results, however, show the majority of lower-income workers desire to live in single-family homes, which could jeopardize developers’ construction of affordable rentals, Councilman Alan Peterson said at a workshop meeting earlier this month.
“(Lower-income workers) may not want to live in that kind of housing,” he said. Councilman Jon Netts agreed, saying ownership of a single-family residence is “the American dream.”
“You can build all the apartments and condos you want, but that’s not what these people aspire to,” he said. “They want to own their own home.”
Barbara Revels, chairwoman of the Flagler County Housing Task Force, said the high cost of land and low salaries contribute to the lack of affordable housing in the city.
The recent increase in impact fees also has hurt because those costs often are passed on to the future Florida home mortgage applicant, said Revels, who owns Coquina Real Estate and Construction in Flagler Beach.
“A builder shouldn’t whine about [the impact fees], but we know more and more people can’t afford that,” she said.
To help, the task force put aside $700,000 of future State Housing Incentives Partnership (SHIP) money toward helping residents with down payments and deposits, Revels said.
At the workshop, Netts said there may not be one solution.
“It’s a mix of opportunities,” he said.
City Manager Jim Landon concurred, saying a city task force will work to analyze the issue and come up with possible solutions.
“This is a huge issue,” he said. “You can’t just put your finger on it and say ‘push this button’ to solve it.”
SOURCE: Daytona Beach News-Journal
