It’s probably going to take an act of Congress but someone is going to have to address the affordability issue in the housing arena. As a Father and Grandfather I watch as a very interested bystander as my youngest attempts to get out on her own. She finished up at the Univer. of Florida last year and will start teaching the “Little Ones" this August.
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We have gone on family expeditions looking at townhouses and small villas and the like for four weeks. The market is down here like most other places and yet when I start crunching the numbers for her on these $128,000 and $135,000 deals when all is said and done she can’t get in for less than 60% of her gross starting salary as a fully certified teacher.
This is a said state of affairs; the income has gone nowhere in the last ten to twelve years and the housing is still more than twice what it was ten years ago (even with the drop of the last year and a half). Not only is it the cost of the house that has seen this inverse growth, but couple it with the never-fixed insurance situation in Florida, the modest property tax, and the latest fad the CDD (in half of the places we looked) and you have a recipe for homelessness!
When a professional that has spent four years at a top school (U of F is a top school!) gained the degree and further certification cannot find basic housing without committing almost 2/3’s of her gross pay to do so we have a real problem…
There is going to have to be a departure from what the developer chooses to build, period. As a former elected official I can tell you the only way the industry is going to build the affordable “Katrina Cottage" cute small housing is if there are forced to do so.
I am not for government intervention in a lot of areas, but providing basic shelter for human beings that they can afford is the right thing to do…
