Florida's Live Local Act

On today’s show we are looking at Florida’s Live Local Act. Florida is an example of how one state has taken real steps to create the incentives for new affordable housing to be created. This legislation is a series of incentives designed to stimulate the development of workforce housing. Many of Florida’s high priced communities have become impossible for the people who work in those communities to live in those same communities. The result is that service staff that work in restaurants, clean homes, cut the lawn, teach in schools, work in hospitals are commuting from a long distance away.

Cities like Miami have very unusual characteristics in their housing market. There is very expensive new construction, and much less expensive housing that is quite old housing stock. The average is somewhere in the middle. But the averages can be misleading. There is virtually zero housing at the average. It’s almost a bipolar distribution with nothing in the middle. Many cities in Florida are increasingly experiencing this phenomenon. Cities like Palm Beach have virtually zero workforce housing.

The Act provides for a comprehensive, statewide workforce housing strategy, designed to increase the availability of affordable housing opportunities for Florida’s workforce, who desire to live within the communities they serve. To date, the funding program has enabled housing for about 13,000 families. That comes to an average of about $15,000 per household.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: [email protected]