Broward housing goes ‘from crisis to catastrophe’
After dealing with incremental $100 to $150 rent increases, Dawn Carrillo was met with a steep $700 increase last year at the two-bedroom Weston apartment that she had lived in for seven years.
Carrillo, a 49-year-old teacher with Broward County Public Schools, had 60 days to find a new place before her lease ended, but she soon learned that many landlords were unwilling to rent to her because of her $50,000 salary.
“You aren’t considered a viable tenant if you didn’t have four times the salary of your rent, and a teacher income definitely wasn’t sufficient,” she said.
That was in April, and Carrillo didn’t find a place until August: a one-bedroom for about $2,000 in Fort Lauderdale as the school year was starting.
“I’m not exactly where I want to be, but I am where I have to be for now,” she said. “I can’t even think of what’s going to happen when it increases.”
Broward County is seeking to address the burden faced by residents such as Carrillo as officials prepare to release their 10-year master housing plan next week. Broward County commissioners met in December to discuss ways the county could help its nearly 2 million residents live comfortably while ideally paying less than one-third of their incomes on housing.
“It used to be that they were talking about teachers, firefighters and police. It’s so far beyond that at this point, with all the different groups that are now costburdened,” Broward County Mayor Nan Rich told the Miami Herald. “It crosses the healthcare industry. Anywhere you
look, you find people who are cost-burdened.”
During a presentation in December, county officials noted that substantive rent increases have been hurting residents, especially because incomes aren’t keeping up. In 2022, Broward ranked last in Florida, with only 25 affordable homes for every 100 families, the Miami Herald previously reported.
About a year ago, the median rent in the county was $2,802, and the median salary was $55,528, according to census data included in the presentation. At the time, the county was short 74,124 affordable rental units. In Fort Lauderdale, where Carrillo lives, that shortage was 7,297 units.
Freelance makeup artist Jacqueline Rodriguez, 53, said she has been looking for a new place because her current residence in Hollywood has mold. Right now, she pays $1,200 for a onebedroom apartment. To move to an apartment of the same size, she would have to shell out about twice that amount.
“I’m doing good but not to-pay-$2,700-per-monthin-rent good,” she said.
Challenges to finding affordable housing don’t stop at rent. In Carrillo’s case, she had to consider application fees and moving expenses before finding an apartment in Fort Lauderdale.
“I had to be very selective about where I was applying because some of them were up to a $125 application fee and then a $300 administrative fee,” she said.
Rodriguez, who is selfemployed, said she has to save room in her budget for high health-insurance premiums.
“I’m trying to get a little headstart to see if there’s anything out there that I can find,” she said of her apartment search. “But the pickings are slim.”
HOUSING WOES
Mayor Rich estimates that Broward had about $250,000 devoted to affordable housing when she joined the Broward County Commission in 2016. Two years later, Broward voters passed an affordable-housing trust fund, a dedicated funding source for the commission to address housing needs.
Since 2018, Rich said $121 million from the county’s general fund has gone toward the affordablehousing fund and been used to build almost 2,700 multifamily units that will remain affordable for 30 years. But the mayor said the funds are still not enough. Broward has a goal of adding 150,000 housing units during the next 30 years.
Ned Murray, associate director of the Metropolitan Center at Florida International University, first assessed Broward’s affordable-housing crisis in 2018. By 2022, when he did another assessment, conditions had worsened.
Murray “said we’ve gone from crisis to catastrophe, and that’s when we decided to come up with a 10year master plan,” Rich said.
According to the 2022 assessment, 62% of Broward renters were costburdened, meaning more than 30% of their income was going toward rent. Of those residents, 52% were “severely” cost-burdened, meaning more than half of their income was going toward rent.
Ultimately, Rich said, both local governments and private-sector employers need to contribute to fixing the crisis and building workforce housing. One example of that, she said, is Memorial Healthcare System, which purchased a piece of land near the U.S. 441 corridor for a project that could include housing for healthcare employees.
“That’s the kind of thing we need,” she said.
‘UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS’
So how did Broward get here? Murray, with FIU’s Metropolitan Center, has been working with the county since at least 2018 to address its housing concerns. He said he believes Broward’s issues started with the housing bubble of 2005 and continued when that bubble burst in 2008 and the county became one of the worst-hit foreclosure areas in South Florida. Home prices and rents increased gradually starting in 2012, and by the time 2018 came, Broward was back where it was during the housing bubble, Murray said.
As things were gradually getting worse, the COVID-19 pandemic turned the situation from “crisis to catastrophe,” he said.
“Our employment base consists of industries and occupations with wages that have not kept up at all to be able to afford the prices and costs that we’ve seen, really, since 2012,” Murray said. “But it’s really accelerated to these unprecedented levels in the last three years since the pandemic.”
Murray said one way to address the problem would be to have each municipality create its own housing trust fund.
Ideally, those funds could help create “higherdensity, mixed-use” areas, he said, so residents can live within walking distance of their jobs or take the bus to work, eliminating or reducing transportation costs.
Such is the case in Hollywood with the development of University Station, a 216-unit, mixed-use, affordable-housing project on city-owned land between Polk and Fillmore streets. The development, expected to be completed in 2025, will be a part of the site for the future Broward Commuter Rail project, which will connect south Fort Lauderdale to Aventura, with a stop in Hollywood.
Municipalities could encourage that type of housing by providing developers with density bonuses for mixed-income, multifamily developments within a half-mile of an existing or planned transit station, Murray said. Density bonuses allow developers to build more units than would normally be allowed, if a portion of them are for affordable housing.
A key part of leveling out rent prices is housing supply. From 2016 to 2022, rent prices increased 70%, and from 2021 to 2022, rents increased by about 39%, from $1,942 to $2,693. The average rent in Broward County is now about $2,535, according to CareerSource Broward.
Murray said part of the reason is an “investor frenzy” that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic: Investors bought real estate properties, driving up rents.
But relief could come as more homes get built. Last month, the county commission approved $25 million in funding for Tequesta Reserve, a multifamily development for seniors in Davie. The development will include 76 units.
Murray, who sits on the task force that put together Broward’s 10-year affordable-housing plan, said the effort will take great participation from Broward’s 31 municipalities in reaching the county’s goal of adding 150,000 housing units in the next three decades.
“If we could address
50% of that number over 10 years, with the support of our municipalities, employers and institutions, we could be successful,” he said. “But that’s going to take that level of sharing and commitment.”
MOVING FORWARD
As residents await the county’s plans, they might not come soon enough for those who need help now. At 53, Rodriguez — the freelance makeup artist in
Hollywood — is hedging her bets that she’ll soon be able to qualify for grants for a down payment on a home at a 55-and-older community.
“That’s really, in a nutshell, what I’m kind of waiting for. So, I say, ‘OK, I’ve made it this far, what’s another year?’ ” she said.
Until then, she’s still concerned about her options. “The thing is, can I find something where I would pay the same amount, or close to it, that I’m paying for my place now?”
Carrillo, the teacher living in Fort Lauderdale, said she would like to see more workforce housing in Broward for firefighters, teachers and other essential workers, similar to the Gallery at West Brickell, a 29-story development that includes 163 units set aside for workforce and affordable housing. Miami-Dade County Public Schools is also considering a workforce-housing plan that would convert two of its properties into affordable housing for its workforce.
Broward County Public Schools recently announced it is closing at least five schools and is considering converting properties into affordable housing for teachers, but a formal plan has not been presented.
But without many options at the moment, Carrillo said she’s considering a career change so she can keep up with cost-of-living increases.
“People are having to consider switching careers,” she said. “When people love their career, they love their job, [but] it’s just not sustainable. And that’s pretty much where I am at this point. I don’t know that I’ll even be able to continue through June.”