WINTER HAVEN, Fla. — In the last year, a housing crisis has swept the country as the cost of living continues to rise. Lack of affordable housing is not unique to the Sunshine State, but a new study found Florida is leading the country in rent increases.
The latest numbers from Rent.com show Florida tops the list of rent increases in the last year, up 23.9%. While rent prices may be highest in places like Tampa and Miami, other parts of the state are seeing a great need for affordable housing as well.
According to the most recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, Polk County was the fastest-growing county in the U.S. in 2021. The report specifically named Lakeland-Winter Haven the seventh fastest-growing metro area in the country.
“Today is a culmination of a lot of hard work on behalf of the City of Winter Haven — our planning committee and our planning commission to finally have workforce housing coming to Winter Haven,” the city’s Mayor Bradley Dantzler told ABC Action News at a very special event on January 30.
It was the groundbreaking of Winter Haven’s first affordable housing complex, two years in the making.
While the city has the Winter Haven Housing Authority, they only offer public housing and Section 8 housing, with all waitlists currently closed.
“It's been something we've been striving for, for years. We had a planning retreat back in 2021 with all five commissioners, and we invited Blue Sky to be here, and they saw the commitment and, and the desire that we as a city have, and they stepped up,” Dantzler explained.
Blue Sky Communities is the developer for the $27 million project called Florence Place, located off of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at First Street North.
It will have 88 units at three different area median incomes, according to the developer:
- Some at 30% AMI – renting for about $300 a month
- Most at 60% AMI – renting for about $800 a month
- And a few at 80% AMI – renting for about $1,200 a month
“In 2021, the city of Winter Haven held a strategic planning workshop where they talked about the need for affordable housing. They talked about the desire to create affordable housing in the city, and we were able to take that initiative and turn it into a development,” said Blue Sky Communities President Shawn Wilson. “We found this property, and we brought it to the city, and they liked it.”
For many smaller cities like Winter Haven, the challenge is attracting developers and revenue sources to build housing at affordable rates.
“It's complicated, and you gotta have somebody like Blue Sky that will come in and put all the pieces together and find the pots of money from the state and the city,” Dantzler said.
It’s especially difficult now with the cost of construction up 40%, lack of labor, and building times taking at least five months longer than pre-pandemic.
“Blue Sky has had to find additional funding to bridge that gap. So even after we were approved for the tax credits at the state, we still had to come back to the county, and they were able to make available $2 million of American Rescue Plan funds for us,” Wilson exclaimed.
This project took a village – including funding from the city, county, Florida Housing Finance Corporation, Chase Bank, Raymond James Tax Credit Funds, as well as Winter Haven’s own Southstate Bank.
“It takes a partnership of people. There's two banks there, and then a financial institution as well,” District 48 Florida Representative Sam Killebrew said at the groundbreaking. “I was born and raised here in Polk County, so it's good to see that the east side of the county, things are happening, anything to do with the affordable housing.”
The city is hoping this is just the beginning.
“If anybody out there is considering Central Florida, we have lots of vacant land around, we have incentives,” Dantzler said, “Come give us a look. We'll help you make it work.”
When it comes to affordable housing, there’s also state funding called the Sadowski Housing Trust Fund, with money collected from real estate taxes.
For decades, the state has been moving more than $2 billion from this pot of money into the general revenue fund, something Representative Killebrew tried to stop back in 2016.
“I was trying to run a bill back when I first got in to stop the sweeping of the Sadowski fund to go into general fund, but we weren't able to get that done, but there's still a lot of money there, and of course the federal government, and the cities, counties have done good,” Killebrew said.
It wasn’t until 2021 that lawmakers passed a bill to stop the sweeping, and last year, they agreed to devote all the Sadowski money to affordable housing.
The Sadowski Housing Coalition estimates that’s about $355 million worth of housing funds in 2023.
Blue Sky has two other affordable housing developments in the works in Lakeland, another in unincorporated Polk County, and this one in Winter Haven. They are all slated for 2024 completion.
For those interested in living at Florence Place, more information about the community, including rental applications, will be posted to florence-place.com at a later date, but you can sign up to be notified when the applications open.