ORLANDO, Fla. — According to data compiled by the University of Florida, Central Florida’s housing shortage for lower-middle-class and low-income families surpassed six figures as of last year.
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According to the annual housing study by the university’s Shimberg Center published in December, an estimated 109,514 more families are making 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) or below than there are affordable units to house them.
That’s an increased shortage of more than 19,000 units across Central Florida, with the lion’s share falling into Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Lake counties.
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Depending on their size and location, units in this range cost between $1,200 and $1,800 per month in Orlando.
The AMI varies by county. In Orange County, it stands at $90,400 for a family of four.
Individuals in the 80% category earn up to $54,050, couples without children earn up to $61,800, and families of four earn up to $77,200.
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Oftentimes, the shortfall has a cascading effect. Families that cannot find a suitable home for their income bracket will turn to a lower-priced unit, pushing downward pressure onto households making less.
The shortage comes amid a furious push by national, state, and local leaders to incentivize and greenlight more affordable units to lower the cost of housing to Floridians, which has been cited by economists as a leading driver of recent inflation.
However, developers still complain about a process bogged down by red tape at the local level.
“The bureaucratic red tape and rules we’ve got to go through is just becoming overwhelming,” Steve Smith, CEO of New Beginnings of Lake County, said. “You come back, and you have to redo a report; it takes weeks and months to get to sign off on those reports.”
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The “Live Local Act,” Florida’s signature housing law passed in 2023, will cut some of the red tape. It allows affordable housing projects to be developed on industrial and commercial sites with minimal interference from local governments.
While several projects are now in various stages of development across Central Florida, not enough time has passed for the law to influence the shortage.
The Shimberg Center’s Anne Ray oversees the data that drives the housing study and said rents across the Sunshine State stabilized last year. However, the study’s findings complimented her observations that people in income levels traditionally considered “comfortable” – true middle-class households -- are now beginning to feel the pinch from the lack of housing options.
Ray agreed that governments needed to find ways to make the development process more efficient, but she also called on developers to seek out different types of housing arrangements. She noted the collapse of condo developments over the past twenty years and said development in the 1980s ′s included smaller apartment buildings, units, and homes.
“We are doing the big multifamily units; we’re doing larger single-family homes,” she noted. “[We] still need to figure out a way to get back to building more of those starter units.”
The housing study included a few bright spots. In addition to the stabilization Ray spoke of, it found that in every Central Florida county except Sumter, developers created more units for the very lowest-income households than the region-added families. However, a shortage of tens of thousands of units still existed.
The study also found gains for families making average to above-average income and an adequate number of overall units for those households, apart from Marion County and Flagler County.
That will continue to allow municipalities in the remaining counties to opt out of the Live Local Act tax exemptions offered to developers for building middle-income housing – saving them millions of dollars in their budgets.
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