January 2, 2016 | Naples Daily News
Editorial
2016: The year ahead
Editor’s note: Last of a series of editorials looking at seven priorities for Southwest Florida for a successful 2016.
During the past week, we’ve outlined six issues so far that we believe will help guide Southwest Florida toward a prosperous 2016.
We’ve called for creating a clear strategy for economic diversification so Collier County can survive the next boom-bust cycle. We’ve urged taxpayer-supported agencies to come together on the best way to provide high-quality, yet reasonably affordable, firefighting and emergency medical response.
We’ve suggested the state put together a school accountability plan that won’t change every year, so educators will reasonably know what they’re shooting for and teachers can be rewarded accordingly.
A fourth focus is on managing growth in vast Northern Golden Gate Estates, where there are few main roads or public services in a residential area with a network of decades-old, dead-end streets and canals. We’ve encouraged widespread community engagement in the start of a Collier County government planning process that will re-evaluate long-term growth in four areas east of Collier Boulevard.
Lastly, we’ve noted the importance of voters showing up to make far-reaching decisions in an election year when majority control of several policy-making boards is at stake in Collier and Lee counties.
Yet none of these significant challenges is the clear-cut No. 1 concern of the Naples Daily News editorial board and its 12-member citizens advisory board.
Most critical to us for 2016 is increasing the availability of safe, affordable homes for poor folks, hospitality workers, laborers, teachers, nurses, first-responders, graduates and seniors of limited income. Of course, homes aren’t only houses, and the supply of rentals is a concern along with the dream of home ownership.
Intertwined
We see these other priorities for 2016 intersecting with the primary issue — homes affordable to all.
A diversified economy certainly comes into play in providing jobs that will survive a future downturn. We need to avoid another foreclosure crisis like the one from which we’re emerging.
Rising home and rental prices are far outstripping wage increases. Data assembled by Collier government staff shows the median housing price nearly doubled in the past 15 years to more than $300,000, yet median household income has remained about the same since 2001.
A vibrant economy needs good schools that can hire the best teachers, who should be fairly rewarded by the state based on classroom performance. Likewise, top-level service is an expectation in paradise and those front-line workers providing it deserve safe, affordable accommodations at the end of the day.
Where will that home be? How densely packed together in neighborhoods? What type of home? Those are among many questions Collier commissioners will continue tackling at an affordable housing meeting at 9 a.m. Feb. 2 in their chambers at the Collier County Government Center, and at planning meetings that begin in January as part of a four-year update of four long-range growth plans.
Leadership
A key decision facing Collier commissioners is to determine who will lead the community forward in problem-solving the issue of providing homes affordable to all.
Suggestions to hire a consultant to guide the effort and to continue enlisting support from the United Way of Collier County seem like good ideas for leading us forward. That could help shield the initiative from politics, which can come into play in an election year.
The commission voted last summer to take a hard line against granting developers waivers from past commitments to build more affordable housing in approved projects. By staff estimates, some 3,000 of those approved units haven’t been built.
As many as four of the five Collier commission seats could be on the ballot in August or November. The current commission is wisely charting a course forward to address this No. 1 priority.
Article last accessed here on January 4.
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