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No Quick Fixes for Affordable Housing

By Commissioner Jeff Koons

Helping our residents find decent affordable housing has become a top priority of the Board of County Commissioners. We’ve all seen the stats, and they’re not very encouraging. Right now, Palm Beach County needs nearly 30,000 new affordable/workforce housing units just to meet our anticipated population growth over the next three years. And unless something drastic happens, we will be facing a shortage of nearly 93,000 homes by the year 2025.

There are plenty of houses available for sale, which wasn’t the case 18 months ago. But it’s not really helping the situation because prices are still too high. The median price stands at $384,000, down just two percent from 2005, even though home sales are off nearly 40 percent. Buyers are waiting for prices to drop; sellers are refusing to budge.

What we need is a major infusion of reasonably priced homes -- houses, town homes, condos and apartments -- that teachers, police officers, nurses, retailers, government and office workers, and service professionals who earn less than median wages can afford to buy or rent.

For several years now, Palm Beach County government has been doing its best to help create and retain affordable workforce housing, and some recently implemented programs are showing good results. Last year, we adopted an ordinance that requires a percentage of units in new developments to be sold at below market prices. We’re offering higher overall density to residential projects that exceed the minimum number of workforce units. Our land grant program passes on a significant cost savings to buyers by donating the land to developers, as long as they agree to build only workforce-priced homes on the site.

And we’re getting help from other fronts. The Housing Leadership Council and the Economic Council of Palm Beach County both have new workforce housing campaigns aimed at closing the affordability gap, the more than $200,000 difference between what homes in this county currently cost and what local workers earn.

We’ve seen thousands of once-affordable apartments being converted to overpriced condos. It’s time to intervene and make it worthwhile for project owners to keep them as rentals.

The Palm Beach County Housing and Community Development Department manages two programs to assist first-time home buyers with their down payment. One uses funding from the State Housing Initiative Partnership (SHIP); the other involves federal HOME dollars. We are also offering subsidies of up to $250,000 for builders of new rental and single-family housing targeted for lower-income families.

Let’s not overlook older existing homes that need a little TLC. The County’s housing rehabilitation program helps pay for repairs to existing homes by using federal block grant funds. This way, owners can stay in their homes and continue working here, rather than being forced to leave the area. Sometimes a structure is so rundown it makes more sense to rebuild. We have a demolition assistance program with no income qualifications and no maximum funding limit. I think we should consider a requirement that if the new house is sold, it must be in the affordable range.

These are some of the things Palm Beach County is doing right now to provide workforce housing, but we’re going to have to do a lot more to level the playing field. I encourage you to work with me and my fellow commissioners to see that every resident of Palm Beach County has a safe, clean and affordable place to call home.