Marco Island’s lack of affordable housing is being recognized by city council as it recently discussed options for implementing more residences for the workforce community.
Last year, council voted to remove the workforce housing density bonuses that were previously included in the city’s 2009 Comprehensive Plan. This allowed for an additional number of residential units above base density if the development provided affordable housing. The most recent plan, established in 2021, now simply encourages workforce housing where appropriate.
“Over time, I think it became somewhat obvious that it was a bit of a slap in the face to our city staff or police and fire or local teachers,” Marco Island Vice Chair Jared Grifoni said at the last council meeting.
This decision created a conversation about having to use more tax dollars to raise staff salaries and other reimbursement offsets, but was ultimately voted down, leaving the city with an unsolved conflict. According to Affordable Housing Online, there are zero low-income housing apartment communities on the island.
Grifoni presented to the council a few concepts to increase workforce housing from the Blue Zones Project and Collier County’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. The first option is conversion of a “commercial by right” subdistrict, allowing owners of a commercial property to implement workforce housing at the same or less impact than the intensity of the allowed commercial use.
Marco Island City Manager Mike McNees said this would fit well on the island. “That’s exactly the kind of solution that could work on Marco Island,” McNees said. “Say a commercial property owner owns a property next to his business, rather than develop and expand his business he wants to put up some housing for his employees. He can do that with a less intensity than expanding his business. Why shouldn’t he be able to do that?”
The second option presented was the concept of a transit-oriented subdistrict, focusing on placing affordable housing along Collier Area Transit corridors. Ensuring that there are residential opportunities near transit locations lessens the need for single occupancy cars, which would decrease the amount of traffic on the island as well.
Option 3 is what is most commonly seen, a development of a mixed-use area that provides a mix of market rate housing and workforce housing along with commercial that provides employment opportunities.
Grifoni mentioned other options such as eliminating impact fees for development of workforce housing or going back to what the 2009 Comprehensive Plan had with the housing density bonus.
“We’re all completely aware of the issues of workforce housing availability in the area and the impacts across the country,” Grifoni said. “Ignoring it is certainly not a good solution, it’s something we need to address.”
The future of affordable housing on Marco Island is unclear as developers took advantage of the housing density bonus option when it was in the books. The expense of developing on the island could be the root of the problem, along with many residents not wanting high density buildings.
“I don’t know how much density we could pack into an acre of ground in order to make it economically feasible for somebody to come in and [provide affordable housing],” Marco Island Chairman Erik Brechnitz said. “I think the amount of density that we could pack into the ground would not be looked on favorably by our citizens.”
Council came to agreement to hold a workshop in the near future to discuss a next step in confronting the lack of the island’s affordable housing options.
“We are a small island, we’re very particular and everything is very unique so situations that are developing elsewhere, solutions that might work in larger communities, probably wouldn’t work here,” Grifoni said. “We have to deal with what we have in front of us.”
