By Gil Smart | TC Palm
Bob Cunha shanghai’ed me outside the Martin County Commission chambers one day last month and asked: When are you going to write about affordable housing again?
Er … how about today?
He went on about how Martin County needs more and better affordable housing, maybe public housing. There are elderly people who are being priced out of this community, he said, and that’s a shame — a moral stain, even.
I agree totally.
But I don’t think we’re going to do much about it.
In fact, that’s why I don’t write much about affordable housing anymore: I’ve come to see it as a lost cause.
Here’s the question I haven’t been able to answer: Is it possible to solve our affordable housing problem, yet at the same time preserve our environment — and our “quality of life?”
For to have more affordable housing, we have to have more housing. We may have to allow for higher housing densities and do other things to lower the cost of building that housing.
And you tell me how much political will there is for any of this in Martin County.
After that encounter outside the commission chambers, I reached out to several local folks close to the issue. Though they differed on potential solutions, all agreed on why affordable housing is in such short supply here: The cost of building housing here is really high. So the housing that does get built is, almost without fail, going to be expensive.
“If you’re a developer trying to do something, it costs you so much to even get through (the) approval process, and takes so long, you can’t afford to build affordable housing,” said Rick Hartman, a commercial real estate broker and president of the advocacy group One Martin.
Now, of course, someone in Hartman’s position is going to say this. But so did Mike Readling, director of resource development for Habitat for Humanity of Martin County:
“As we all know, Martin County has worked really, really hard to control growth,” he wrote in an email. “And it’s worked really well.”
That is, supply is low and demand is high, and that pushes prices ever skyward.
In August, the median sales price for a single-family home in Martin County was $360,000; the average sales price was $477,170.
Many who work in the county’s service industry could never dream of affording that.
“We have left behind the very population that makes this community tick,” Readling said.
These high prices are, in part, by design. Martin County has “impact fees” to pay for infrastructure because we want development to pay for itself as much as possible. For the smallest dwellings — 800 square feet and under — those fees clock in at just over $5,400 per unit.
That means, essentially, that a home must sell for $5,400 more than it otherwise might.
Understand, I’m not inveighing against impact fees. “But that’s only going to get passed on to the buyer,” said H.B. Warren, president of Martin County Realtors of the Treasure Coast.
That drives prices up — and maybe out of reach.
So how do you get more housing within reach of those who need it?
Tom Lucido, owner of Lucido & Associates, a Stuart land planning and landscape architecture firm, suggested crafting public-private partnerships where government works with developers and builders to tackle the problem.
Understand what that might involve: easing county regulations that govern land development in certain “targeted” areas. Higher densities and lower impact fees or no impact fees to bring the cost of development down.
Lucido even suggested the county or municipalities could make available some government-owned land for such development.
“If we want to live in a diversified community, if you want housing to be attainable for teachers, police officers, firefighters and young professionals, there’s got to be more flexibility,” he said.
At what cost?
Given the condition of our waters — not to mention the traffic on our roadways — are higher densities wise? Why should lower-cost, denser housing get off without impact fees, when it will arguably create more of an impact than less-dense (but more expensive) development?
Unless we do these things, what can change?
Yes, there are other possibilities. The state Legislature could quit raiding the Sadowski Trust Fund, meant to subsidize construction of affordable housing and help low-income people pay rent or make a down payment on a home.
Or we could start talking about “tiny homes,” like the ones being built in the Florida Keys, to house a workforce that sure can’t afford your typical Keys home.
Now you see why I don’t write about this much anymore.
The deck is stacked against affordable housing in Florida anyway; there’s so much demand, there’s so much money to be made. Higher housing prices in Martin County, or any county, benefit those who already own a home there, rather than those who aspire to but can’t afford it.
Bottom line, there’s no broad impetus for change.
And until there is — nothing will.
Article last accessed on on October 1, 2018 here. A print-ready version is available here.