Live Local Act may not be helping some people find affordable housing

It’s been over a year since Gov. Ron DeSantis signed what’s known as the Live Local Act into law.

With Florida ranking 40th in the country for housing affordability, the bill was designed to help people live closer to where they work.

But according to a new report from the Florida Policy Institute (FPI), the law might not be cutting it for some public servants.

The FPI said that those who qualify for the affordable housing the Act would create usually earn between 80-120% of the Area Median Income (AMI).

However, the average salary for workers like firefighters, law enforcement officers and educators who are the sole earners in their family falls below that threshold.

So as that household grows, the affordable housing ceases to be truly affordable.

According to Cecily Hodges, FPI’s housing and community development policy analyst, this puts an unfair burden on those who are singlehandedly supporting children, parents or people with disabilities.

“The word ‘dignity’ kept being brought up in the arguments for (the) Live Local (Act), so do only people in a nuclear family deserve dignity?” she said. “Why should someone who’s 40 years old have to get a roommate in order to afford an apartment?”

To put it simply, Florida’s affordable housing situation is “pretty dire,” according to Hodges.

Read the full report here

The FPI found that:

• 83.6% of the assessed areas are unaffordable for a three-person family on the average salary of a firefighter.
• 0% of the assessed areas are unaffordable for a four-person family on the average salary of a firefighter.
• 55.2% of the assessed areas are unaffordable for a three-person family on the average salary of an educator.
• 61.2% of the assessed areas are unaffordable for a four-person family on the average salary of an educator.

The report also ranked housing affordability:

• Affordable: household spends  <= 30% of their income on housing costs.
• Cost-burdened household: spends > 30% of their income on housing costs.
• Severely cost-burdened household:  spends > 50% of their income on housing costs.

Hodges explained that the Act should be reworked to specifically address the needs of those who fall into the latter two categories.

“That’s a lot of your fast food workers, it’s a lot of your retail workers. Half of them are paying over half of their income (for housing), and the other almost half are paying over a third, which is still cost burdened,” Hodges said.

She said there are several reasons why the affordability problem persists, including the 2008 crisis when many developers went out of business and construction never resumed at the same scale.

“And then there’s the property insurance,” Hodges said. “Florida’s property insurance is a little over $3200 more than the national average.”

Although she recognizes that cost of living and climate concerns contribute to that price tag, she compared our insurance rates to California, which experiences similar conditions.

“They’re still like $800 below the national average because they have a lot of consumer protections,” she said.

Hodges suggested three changes to the Live Local Act, which she feels would make it more equitable.

1. Amending the legislation to specify the amounts of money being given to each AMI range, and reserving some funds for the lowest AMI ranges who are most in need. Currently, the funds are distributed at the Florida Housing Finance Corporation’s discretion.
2. Designating a recurring portion for the local government to incentivize government-funded affordable housing construction. Currently, only private sources receive recurring funding.
3. Put money towards local governments for housing vouchers. The idea is that residents can use the vouchers to use towards things like property insurance and rent.