Port St. Lucie was America’s third fastest-growing city between July 2005 and July 2006, according to U.S. Census counts released this week. (more…)

Despite a prolonged South Florida housing market, 4,000 new homes will be going up west of I-95 on land that started the city’s westward expansion long before Tradition or PGA Village became household names. (more…)

Port St. Lucie officials said Wednesday that they needed to find multiple solutions to the widening gap between household incomes and home prices in the city.

Long considered the affordable housing capital of the Treasure Coast, Port St. Lucie has seen its home prices skyrocket in recent years, putting home ownership out of reach for low and even moderate wage earners.

“The economic sustainability of the region depends on finding solutions to housing the work force,” said Greg Vaday, economic development coordinator for the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council.

The City Council will try to use information from this workshop and future workshops to form a comprehensive policy for staff at the July City Council retreat, according to City Manager Don Cooper.

“This is a highly political issue,” Cooper said.

Vice Mayor Jack Kelly said the city’s legacy from the General Development Corporation — about 80,000 single-family lots over the entire city east of Interstate 95 — meant that officials could work on the issue only in the annexed areas west of I-95.

Tricia Swift-Pollard, community services director, told council members that the median home price in the city is $255,738, as of December 2006.

However, a Florida mortgage for a home at that price is unaffordable for workers such as an elementary school teachers making an average $44,000 annual salary, a retail salesperson, or even a civil engineer making $58,000 a year.

The city should have a variety of housing types for people with different budgets and needs, including more multi-family home units like apartments and condos, Planning & Zoning Director Cheryl Friend said.

Those types of dwellings would offer reasonable Florida mortgage loan payments for people with moderate income levels, which are plentiful and essential to the economic survival of the area.

Yet after years of pushing by officials to get more multi-family units built, the percentage of single-family homes remained practically the same for the last 25 years — about 90 percent of all homes in the city.

Area companies feel the effects of a tough South Florida housing market as well. A survey of 56 companies with dozens of employees in St. Lucie County revealed that 85 percent of them find that recruiting employees has become much more difficult this past year, partly from housing costs.

In the next workshop, as yet unscheduled, developers and other groups from the private sector will continue to address soaring Florida housing costs and their impact on the region as they speak directly to the City Council.