7 minute read
Priced Out
Community-wide, collaborative efforts are underway to create attainable and workforce housing in Collier County
BY DICK HOGAN
Arush of wealthy pandemic refugees is fast displacing Collier County’s essential workers and now the county is trying an array of tactics to keep them here. But business and government leaders alike are worried that might not happen quickly enough to sustain the quality of life that brought the newcomers in the rst place.
“Our real problem is that we need people to x our cars, build houses, serve our food, cut our grass, get stu done,” says Maurice Cossairt, chair of the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® (NABOR®) Governmental Issues Committee. “And they’re being lost in the fray.”
District 5 Collier County Commissioner William “Bill” L. McDaniel Jr. says the problem can be solved by streamlining construction permitting along with incentives for builders to include lower-priced units in future rental projects.
e county’s message for nonpro t and for-pro t builders alike: “Come back to me with a deal—a piece of property that is developable that provides for housing a ordability—and even if we have to take money out of ad valorem (taxes) and back ll it out of the sales tax revenue, then we’ll do the deal.”
Gimme Shelter
Meanwhile, high prices in Collier are pushing the workforce out altogether, says Mary Waller, a member of the NABOR® Board of Directors. With few single-family listings under $400,000 in Collier, most working couples are now shut out of homeownership, says Waller, who also serves on the Collier County A ordable Housing Advisory Committee.
“To buy a $400,000 property, you need to be making at least $117,000 to even qualify for a mortgage,” she says. “Mostly, people can’t a ord that, even with a double income.”
e choices aren’t great even for those who try to nd a house in a nearby community and commute to Collier, she notes. “Even if you go to Estero or Bonita Springs, prices are not much di erent from prices in Naples.”
Many workers travel from Lee, Hendry, Glades, and even Charlotte counties to their jobs in Collier County each day: e commuter tra c (and congestion) on I-75 and U.S. 41 clearly illustrates this fact. Community leaders have noted that when local employees live outside of the county, they are not participating in local school, church, or nonpro t activities, or shopping or paying taxes in this community. And emergency and law enforcement commuters are at a distance when a natural disaster strikes.
If people can’t live closer to their jobs, Waller says, “they’ll wind up going to Tampa or into the middle of the state. ey just leave altogether. You’re going to lose your workforce.” Still, she remains somewhat optimistic. “Little by little, things are happening.”
Keeping Them Here
An array of rental assistance programs and new multi-family construction are springing up to provide some solutions. Most ambitious is a 350-unit apartment complex being built on 25 acres at the site of the defunct, 167-acre Golden Gate Golf Course, purchased by the county in July 2019 for $29 million. e complex will include 250 units for essential workers making 80 to 120 percent of the local median income. e county will continue owning the land for this purpose, and it cannot be sold. “It’s teachers, nurses, EMTs, re ghters, and police,” says Collier Community Foundation President/CEO Eileen Connolly-Keesler. e Collier Community Foundation collaborated with other contributors to raise $10 million to defray costs to keep rents down.
“We were trying to get our essential employees to live in Collier instead of driving an hour or two,” she says. “ ey were priced out four years ago and now they’re really priced out.” e Golden Gate project has experienced the same issues that have plagued workforce housing in Collier, Connolly-Keesler says. “ e most di cult issue is getting the rezoning done and getting it to the point that we can actually begin construction due to the policies of the county and all the time this takes,” she laments. “Why is it taking twoand-a-half years to be able to put a shovel in the ground?”
A delay that long is disheartening to the people and organizations that nancially back workforce housing, she says. “ e di cult thing, at least for these donors who have been at the table, is this project has been so slow moving that I think we’re going to have to make changes to get donors to want to participate,” Connolly-Keesler says. Donors were excited to support the project and watch it become a reality—and it hasn’t yet.
Connolly-Keesler believes this publicprivate partnership was the rst of its kind in Florida, and these collaborations will be key to future projects. Private enterprise isn’t suited for providing attainable housing stock, Connolly-Keesler says. “A developer can’t make this work if you have to pay $50 million for the land. e numbers will not work.”
Future public-private partnerships will likely be smaller given the lack of large, undeveloped tracts. “Even small parcels can give you 40 units or 25 units,” ConnollyKeesler says. When it comes to attainable housing, “we’ve just got to take it where it is.”
Roots of the Problem
e shortage of attainable and workforce housing may just now be coming to a head, but the problem has been a long time in the making, says Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Michael Dalby. “Some of it dates back to the real estate recession in 2008,” he says. “We haven’t built enough new homes, whether they’re multi-family or single-family homes, to meet demand.”
Dalby says there are several factors that have combined to create today’s crisis: delays in approving and permitting new developments, high land prices, a shortage of construction labor, and the rising cost of building materials because of national demand amid supply chain hiccups. “A lot of factors have come together to where it’s di cult to come up with short-term solutions,” he notes.
Most recently, demand for housing rapidly increased over the past two years during the pandemic as more people moved to Florida. According to the Florida O ce of Economic and Demographic Research, an estimated 329,717 new residents settled in Florida between April 2020 and April 2021.
“Oftentimes, those individuals were cashing out from someplace else,” Dalby says. “ ey had the money and the means to be able to buy at a higher price and they’re oftentimes not continuing on as part of the workforce. ey’ve completed their work. ey’re retired or not working.”
NAPLES RENT BY THE NUMBERS
Rent from March 2020 to March 2022: 48.6 percent increase
SOURCE: apartmentlist.com
Helping People Stay
Home prices have risen to the point where it’s hard to help the people who are working to buy in Collier County, says Michael Puchalla, executive director of the nonpro t Housing Development Corporation of SW Florida, which is dedicated to homebuyer,
credit, and lending education.
Properties are being snapped up with cash transitions, which is shrinking available housing inventory down to historically low levels. “ ere just hasn’t been much, if at all, inventory,” he says. “We had several people who were in a good spot credit-wise, debt-ratio wise, who made a couple of o ers and they literally weren’t in competition because the cash o ers were stronger. eir o ers were not accepted.” e high cost of real estate has spilled over to the rental market. “Because of the increase in the home values,” Puchalla says, “we’ve recently seen massive increases in rent payments, so that’s also now become a whole di erent situation.” Legal Aid Services of Collier County and the Housing Development Corporation of SW Florida have partnered with the county to create an Eviction Diversion Program to facilitate mediations between landlords and tenants to avoid evictions.
But the bottom line is that the programs can’t provide a permanent solution for renters or homebuyers, Puchalla says. “ ey’re not going to be able to a ord to go out and buy something. ey can’t a ord the rent they’re in but at least the county has some short-term resources— between 12 and 18 months of assistance—that can help to keep their heads above water with the hope that maybe the market will settle down or that households can increase their capabilities.”
An Uncertain Future
e creation of workforce housing units has proceeded at a snail’s pace in part because of the long permitting process for construction in general, says McDaniel. “Since I became a commissioner in 2016, I’ve been participatory in approving 9,500 multi-family units. Do you know how many are on the ground? 1,600,” he says. He calls the standard timeframe of 36 months from project pre-application to receiving a certi cate of occupancy “a systemic problem.”
During these long lead times, developers “have to put cash into it, and that starts to impact your rate of return on the other side,” McDaniel says. “ en you add $30,000 in impact fees.”
Reducing impact fees would theoretically reduce the construction cost and the rent but there’s a catch, McDaniel admits: “ ere’s no guarantee that the developer receiving that bene t is going to pass it on to the consumer.”
