77% of Key West renters, owners ‘cost burdened’
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
Key West city commissioners know there is an affordable housing crisis in Key West but seeing that problem laid out in black and white in an executive summary written by the planning department was particularly bleak.
And the remedies proposed by City Planner Don Craig and his staff would likely cause howls from developers, change the city’s skyline by throwing out height limits for affordable housing developments and require residents to approve one or more referendums at the ballot box.
“Affordable housing has been an issue in Key West for at least three decades,” Craig told city commissioners at their Tuesday, Oct. 7, meeting. “It’s not an issue that will go away by a simple fix.”
The most telling statistic in the planning department’s six- page “white paper” on solutions to the dire need for affordable housing was the percentage of annual income residents have to pay in rent or home ownership costs. City and federal guidelines state that not more than 30 percent of a person’s income should go towards housing costs. However, in Key West, that figure stands at 40 to 50 percent, meaning that approximately 77 percent of the city’s renters and homeowners are “cost burdened,” as the report says, a term referring to people over that 30 percent guideline.
“We have anecdotal information that is frightening,” Craig said.
“The data was very telling,” said Commissioner Teri Johnston. “It’s very disconcerting.”
The problem is and has been clear: The soaring cost of homes due to second home owners and an increase in tourism has put homeownership out of reach for the average Key West worker, who makes $37,844 a year. Based on that salary, that worker could afford a home costing an average of $156,000. However, the median home price in Key West is $650,000.
“Our workforce housing ordinance, created in 2004 and 2005, based on 2000 census data, is woefully out of date. The issues then are not the issues now,” Craig said.
And the situation is no better in the rental market. The report states that a fair affordable rental rate should be $946 per worker but that is practically non-existent.
To combat the growing gap between year-round workers and soaring housing costs, Craig proposed a three-pronged solution that would create potentially divisive reactions. The first would be for the city to work with the Monroe County Land Authority to rezone specific areas to allow higher density. This would be accomplished by changing the current height restrictions on the island, which range from 25 to 30 feet in some residential areas to 40 feet for some commercial properties. Requiring a voter referendum, Craig proposed that affordable and workforce housing developments be allowed to build up over the current height restrictions. That exception would not apply to market rate developments.
Second, Craig wants the city’s state representative to petition the state legislature to change the way Land Authority funds can be used, including allowing direct subsidies of affordable housing construction. And lastly, Craig proposed amending the city’s workforce housing ordinance to require any redevelopment of hotels and other commercial properties to potentially include some affordable units. Currently, only new development projects, not redevelopment of existing property, are required to offer a percentage of the redeveloped units as affordable. Since there is so little vacant land available for new development, much of the commercial construction in Key West falls under the redevelopment heading with no affordable requirements. Any change in that formula would reduce developers’ profit margins.
Craig asked city commissioners to give him the go-ahead to begin putting his recommendations into action. While some commissioners agreed with Craig’s direction, however, no formal vote was taken.
“I support moving this forward as quickly as possible,” said Commissioner Jimmy Weekley, who was joined by Commissioner Teri Johnston.
Commissioner Clayton Lopez was worried that the emphasis would be on creating workforce housing, not affordable units, which are often less expensive than workforce units.
“Several of us have talked about encouraging young people to come back and raise their kids. We have to be careful we don’t ignore the rest of the need,” he said.
Commissioner Tony Yaniz said that he liked some of Craig’s proposals, including eliminating the expiration for deed-restricted housing. Currently, the city has 1,089 affordable housing units, but 223 will have their affordable deed restrictions expire at the end of the year, meaning the current affordable rents will be allowed to increase to market rate.
“Obviously we’re looking at a couple years down the road, even if we started tomorrow morning,” Yaniz said.
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What is amazing are the numbers of “affordable” housing units that the City has allowed or colluded to have removed to support its various ‘looking good’ projects. e.g. the NOAA installation supplanted some fifty to sixty affordable homes in what used to be a manufactured housing park. What has that monstrosity provided the community, other than a waste of space?
Also, not to be forgotten, are the eighty to a hundred units that were removed when a sizable swath of the Stadium mobile home park was cleared.
Aluminum or not, those were ‘affordable’ housing units.
Within the same context, let us also consider the usurpation of the Glynn Archer School as the site for yet another city hall. This was just plain silly.
Why, the question begs, does a city 2 miles by 4 miles need a full city block to house its machinations? The facilities on Simonton Street could have been renovated for a fraction of the cost.
And speaking of the cost…who bears the burden? You and me.
Perhaps the bobble-headed administrators felt they needed a daily reminder of their great triumph over affordability by having the NOAA building directly across the street.
Maybe the solution is to go back to the days when the rich folks had maid’s quarters in their homes to house the people who did all the work serving them and maintaining their property. Make it a law that each home worth more than X$’s must have include housing for one or more staff on site or provided by the homeowner elsewhere on the island. They are able to bid up the prices on these vacation homes and turn them into jewel boxes that the rest of us can only dream of, they can provide housing for the people who do the work that makes them and keeps them so valuable, just like mansion owners did in the past.
Food – shelter – safety. Those are the three most basic human needs, without any one of which, no human can thrive. Please let us not pit the help for the homeless against the help for the workforce. There is no comparison. Even if I choose to work three jobs in order to be here in this wonderful environment, I am better off than my fellow human who is without these basic needs. Nobody WANTS to be homeless. These people are in this condition temporarily or they will simply get very sick and die. Do not judge the whole by a handful of bad parts. We are federally obligated to provide shelter for the people we want off our streets so they won’t disrupt business and tourism. We are only compassionately inclined to help our low paid workers.
Nothing is gained, and much lost, by thinking and claiming publicly that our workforce is more deserving of help than our 600 – 1200 citizens so ravaged by life that they have absolutely nothing.
The lifting of height limits would be disastrous. Most people would not walk across the street to see a new highrise building. The attraction here is the charm of a town in a turn of the century time warp. Muck around with that, and goose is cooked, so to speak. No more golden eggs. Why not put the units on Stock Island? More room, less disruption to downtown commerce when building takes place. The big idea behind restricting transient licenses was force homeowners with space to rent to rent it longer term. How did that work out?