Central Florida counties scout for new affordable housing sites
Central Florida officials on Friday looked at areas ripe for building and redeveloping affordable housing that does more than connect with bus routes.
At a regional affordablehousing workshop in Orange County, William O’Dell, director of the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center, identified Central Florida’s “areas of opportunity” that could give low-income residents access to everything from higher-performing schools and safer neighborhoods to transportation and jobs.
“Typically what we find in this area is that you have locations that are rated very high for accessibility but low for opportunities,” said O’Dell, whose group assisted local governments in rethinking their approach to housing residents in a region marked by some of the lowest wages in the nation.
More than 100 people filled the chambers of the Orange County Administration Center for the workshop.
Affordable-housing officials from elsewhere in the region primarily outlined where growth is slated to occur during the next several decades and the need to consider everything from building more affordable apartments near SunRail stations to establishing zoning options that encourage homeowners to rent portions of their homes in order to generate more household income and also provide needed housing.
Mitchell Glasser, community-development manager for Orange County, cited this week’s opening of Goldenrod Pointe Apartments at 556 Solidago Drive, Winter Park, as providing 70 units for low or very-low income tenants and 14 units slated for residents who had been homeless.
With land donated by the county, the project is a model that might lead to more mixed-income apartments with relatively open doors to applicants who have had evictions and low credit scores, he added.
With its workforce dependent on traveling to low-wage, service-sector jobs, Osceola County stood out among Central Florida counties facing challenges.
O’Dell and others identified the rows of old motels along U.S. Highway 192 West in Kissimmee as pockets that have become home to wage challenged laborers who are dependent on bus routes to find work.
Osceola County Community Development Administrator Susan Caswell said the county is starting to focus on beefing up education and
other support services nearby to give families a better long-term foothold.
In southwest Osceola, the sprawling Poinciana development has transitioned from a retirement community to a collection of affordable neighborhoods that largely lacks transportation to jobs, shopping, worship and other services. Officials said a proposed SunRail commuter rail station planned there should better connect that area to the rest of the region.
Osceola is also challenged in terms of getting funding because much of the residential development there has been vacation rentals and those part-time residents do nothing to boost full-time populations counts, which determine the size of federal affordable-housing grants.
Several speakers noted that wages and income are the “elephant in the room” but no one laid out incentives or other plans to work with servicesector employers on increasing pay.
Caswell said Osceola is working to diversify its economy by adding higher-paying jobs with plans for a tech hub called NeoCity near Kissimmee.
“The jobs in Osceola are lower wage. We don’t have currently a mix of jobs,” she said. “The housing is more affordable and we need to ensure we not only have the housing but also the wages to enter that housing.”