The Florida Homeless Coalition released a study in August that captures, among other things, the gap between wages and affordable housing in each of the state’s 67 counties.
The coalition said the 2024 Homeless Matters Report—which provides statistics up to 2022—serves as an “essential resource for advocates, policymakers and community leaders across the state.”
The report underscores what county administrators have known for a long time: That the gap between income and housing costs is growing in Florida. A Floridian working at minimum wage has to have almost 2.6 full-time jobs to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment. That’s 104 hours of working a week, which is not good news, because there are only 168 hours in a week.
The report comes with an online, interactive dashboard at flhousing.org that compares wages, affordable housing costs and other homeless stats by county—including Collier County and Naples.
The report indicates that the median income in Collier County is $52,197, which is $25.09 an hour, but also that obtaining a mortgage for a single-family home in Naples requires an $89-an-hour job. The coalition determined, using the American Community Survey statistic, that renting a basic, one-room apartment requires—at a minimum—a full-time job paying $21.34 an hour; the Zillow Repeat Rent Index the coalition cites said an individual needs a full-time wage of $35.77 an hour to rent an apartment in the Naples area.
Wage disparity shows who’s unlikely to afford housing, according to the Homeless Coalition. The study breaks down Collier County’s income by race: Whites make an average $74,899; Asians, $58,108; African Americans, $23,338; Hispanics, $25,703.
Then there are the children: In the past decade, the report found, Florida has seen a 122% increase in children living in multi-family flats or motels. Collier County’s Michael Overway, executive director of the Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, said his organization helps those families.
“Now that one-bed, one-bath apartments are going for $2,000 a month, single parents are losing their housing, too,” Overway said. “There is now a wave of folks hitting the streets; we are case-managing 165 single parents living in their cars.”
Don’t forget the elderly, Overway added. The number of senior citizens who have lost their apartments due to high rent shot up in the past couple of years. Though the law banned landlords from evicting tenants during COVID, some Collier County landlords did so anyway, he said.
“In Collier, they were still walking people out to the street,” he said. “Since the pandemic, we’ve seen this uptick in homelessness, especially senior citizens.”
Once accounting for fewer than 3%, the number of homeless senior citizens rose by 22% in 2022 and 33% the next year, he said.
Kristi Sonntag, Collier County’s Community and Human Services director, said the county deploys Sadowski State and Local Housing Trust Fund money and other grants to improve housing affordability. That’s not easy to do in a county where the average value of homes increased by $356,899 in one year, according to SmartMatics.
“We utilize the Local Housing Assistance Plan strategies approved by the county commissioners,” Sonntag said. “All funds are awarded through the annual grant cycle that occurs each year in January.”
Cormac Giblin, director of the county’s Economic Development & Housing Division, outlined a few of the county’s affordable housing developments. The county provides incentives to developers who construct a number of low-income units.
“This model has been replicated many times over the past several years, resulting in the approval of more than 4,000 new affordable units, of which nearly 1,000 have already been built,” Giblin said.
One development, the 72-unit Ekos Santabarbara in East Naples, includes apartments for low-income families. The county builds such projects on county-owned surplus land with the participation of “developer-partners” that obtain variances.
Another project, the 304-unit Allura apartments in North Naples, includes 31 units restricted to low-income individuals and families. The developer builds affordable apartments in exchange for density allowances.
People can register for affordable housing at colliercountyhousing.com, Sonntag said. The county also educates the public on affordable housing opportunities via social media and direct mailing, and by manning booths at community events.
Overway has found a way to match homeless people with housing: Send them to states where they can find affordable housing.
“Our outreach teams engage in the streets every day,” he said. “We get them (the homeless) connected to jobs through CareerSource, JobLink—or apply through the Social Security disability application process.”
They find space for seniors in group homes in Naples and Collier, where a handful of older folks share a house. They also send homeless people in Collier County to other states where they can afford housing.
“We’ve had success with finding housing out of state in Georgia, northern Michigan and New Mexico,” he said. “We put them on a Greyhound bus, or if they live in their cars, give them gas cards to get them out there. We arrange lease agreements for their new apartments and give them security deposits.”
Tackling homelessness takes the kind of efforts that the county and Overway are undertaking. The 2024 Homeless Matters Report “urges collaboration among government, private sector and nonprofit organizations to accelerate the development of affordable housing units.”
This story was published in The Naples Press on Sept. 13.
