There’s No Place Like

HOME?

By the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation

Two out of five households are struggling under housing costs. Housing affordability for essential employees and seniors is projected to become

a crisis as Collier County’s population continues to increase.

W hen you’re shelling out most of your paycheck just to keep a roof over your head, what’s left in your wallet? It’s a question two out of fi ve households in Collier

County ask each day.

Forty percent of all Collier County households (58,685) are considered “cost burdened”—paying more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing costs. Of these, 29,342 are considered “severely cost burdened,” spending more than 50 percent of their gross income on housing expenses.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed to the 40,000 people (17.4 percent of the workforce) who commute daily from outside of Collier County because they can’t aff ord to live near their jobs or in this community.

Cost burdened residents, both homeowners and renters, have little remaining in their wallet to cover a car break-down or medical crisis, or save for college or retirement. They have a tight budget for buying basic necessities, such as food, gas and clothing, let alone splurging on dining out and entertainment—expenditures that fuel the local economy. “They” are everyday people we all count on: teachers, paramedics, law enforcement, entry-level and nonprofi t professionals, service industry workers, and medical and healthcare staff .

As Collier County’s real estate market has steadily soared skyward since the Great Recession ended in 2011, the inventory of aff ordable and workforce housing has steadily declined. By the end of 2017, the median single-family home sales price in Collier County was $434,900, while the statewide median was $237,500. Lee County’s was $243,500, according to Florida Realtors. Local condos and townhouses were $273,700 but the statewide average was $172,500. Meanwhile, rents have been on the march: A two-bedroom in 2017 was $1,195—almost 15 percent higher than the previous year. This squeezes out an entry-level registered nurse or patrol offi cer, whose starting salary allows for a $1,175 aff ordable monthly rent. Recently, Collier County was named the second-fastest-growing luxury real estate market in the country by Realtor.com.

“Current renters trying to purchase a home have diffi culty fi nding a home within their purchase price,” said Darlyn Estes, human resources director for the Collier County Sheriff ’s Offi ce. For couples with two incomes, “it’s a little frustrating when the average house is $450,000 to try to save up for a down payment. They become severely cost burdened and work lots of overtime. You don’t want to be in that situation; it’s precarious. Overtime is not guaranteed.”

When Estes says that housing costs have “been a big topic around here for a few years—it’s nothing new,” the 23-year sheriff ’s offi ce veteran is on target. Almost 18 percent of the department’s 1,232 employees live outside of the county. “It’s on both sides: For people looking to purchase a home, it’s out of range. If they’re looking to rent, they can’t fi nd anything available. Inventory is tight.” She’s right again: Rental vacancies in multi-family buildings are at a very low 2 percent, according to recent fi ndings, “indicating a signifi cant unmet demand for rental housing options.” For those who fi nd a house or apartment to rent, an estimated 52 percent are cost burdened, while 25 percent are severely cost burdened.

People who work in sectors that make up more than 50 percent of all jobs in Collier County are at risk of

being cost-burdened.

Source: Florida Realtors

Median Single-Family Home Sales Price 2017

$0 $100,000 $200,000 $300,000 $400,000 $500,000

■ Florida ■ Charlotte ■ Lee ■ Collier

Florida$237,500

Charlotte$206,000

Lee$243,500

Collier$434,900

Community-wide eff orts to put housing under the microscope have been in the works since 2014. The Collier County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) held aff ordable housing workshops in March of 2015 and 2016, when it launched the Collier County Community Housing Stakeholders Group and paid for an advisory panel study by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to hone in on the obstacles and solutions to the problem. The ULI’s report was released in early 2017, stating, “Collier County absolutely has a housing aff ordability problem. It is not a crisis yet, but if housing is not addressed, the panel believes that it will become a crisis. Given the growth projections for the county, the panel believes this problem will occur far sooner than expected.” The county is expected to add 58,000 households by 2040.

As required by state law, Collier County “must plan for the provision of housing for all current and anticipated future residents,” according to Florida statutes. “Basically, it’s part of the state’s growth management statutes, providing water, sewer, storm water, health, safety—and housing is one of those things,” said Cormac Giblin, Collier County’s housing and grant development manager.

The Board of County Commissioners approved the creation of the Community Housing Stakeholders Group in 2016, which included more than 35 members representing a broad coalition: major employers; developers and real estate professionals; non-profi ts; advocacy groups; and government liaisons. It held more than 50 regular and subcommittee meetings and fi ve public hearings. Based on these meetings and the ULI recommendations, the Collier County Community Housing Plan was released in October 2017.

The immediate need for aff ordable housing is also highlighted in the 2017 Collier County Community Needs and Assets Assessment, funded by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation to identify and quantify the community’s positive attributes, as well as its problems. The Schulze Family Foundation is hosting a community forum to discuss workforce and aff ordable housing on Monday, Sept. 10, at 5 p.m. at the Headquarters Library on Orange Blossom Drive in Naples.

To dig even deeper this year, the Community Foundation of Collier County paid Ability Housing, Inc., a nonprofi t developer, to analyze certain county-owned land and other factors to determine the feasibility of developing those sites for workforce housing. “The Community Foundation and Schulze Foundation, we’re looking at, ‘What are the possibilities here?’” said Community Foundation of Collier County President/CEO Eileen Connolly-Keesler. “We clearly don’t have what we need in this county, especially for essential employees to live. The Community Foundation paid for the study to see if we can get our arms around this. How do we deal with it?”

Experts say that a lack of aff ordable housing weakens the fabric of the community when people who come and go for work don’t live close enough to volunteer for local churches or nonprofi ts, to assist recovery eff orts following a natural disaster and participate in educational and civic activities. They may not shop locally, and they certainly don’t pay property tax. They may choose not to relocate here or take a job altogether. For these reasons, it could ultimately have a detrimental rippling eff ect on the local economy.

Long-standing Concerns, StudiesUpcoming Forums on Community

NeedsHealthcare

Where: Headquarters Library

2385 Orange Blossom Dr. Naples, FL 34109

When: Monday, October 8

5:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m.

FUTURE TOPICS AND FORUMS

Stay tuned for upcoming community forums—location to be

determined:

About the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation

The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation was created in 2004 by Best Buy founder, Dick Schulze, to

give back to the communities where Dick and his family grew up—in Minnesota, where he built Best

Buy to become the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer and in Florida, where he now maintains a

permanent residence. The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation creates

grant partnerships with organizations in the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area in Minnesota and in Lee and Collier counties that generate transformational

results in human and social services, education, and health and medicine.

Find out more about the Foundation and the 2017

Collier County Community Needs and Assets Assessment:

SchulzeFamilyFoundation.org.

Environment – November

Recreation/Leisure –December

Employment/Economy – January

Safety – February

Transportation/Infrastructure – March

The average cost of a new home in the town of Ave Maria is $300,000—below last year’s median home sales price in Collier County of $434,900. Courtesy: Barron Collier Companies

Continued on page 3

What’s Affordable? What’s Workforce?

The cost of a home or rent doesn’t completely defi ne the problem; it is directly tied to annual area median household income (AMI). The AMI is adjusted every year. For 2018, the AMI in Collier County is $75,000, according to Giblin.

Whether a household is above, at or below the AMI depends on how many people live under the roof. Those living at half, or 50 percent of the median income, rank as very low-income, while those at 80 percent are low-income. Moderate-income housing is aff ordable to those making between 81 percent 95 percent of the AMI. A single person making $73,500 would fall into a “gap,” where their income appears decent but it may still not cover an aff ordable monthly

housing cost. And that’s not uncommon in pricey locales. “Even people who make an above-moderate income can’t fi nd available product they can aff ord,” Giblin said.

“Aff ordable” doesn’t mean run-down, industrial-style complexes—“projects” that some quickly envision. “What is really being talked about is housing aff ordability,” notes the ULI. And this is a real challenge when you consider that the employment sectors with salaries that place employees most at risk to become cost burdened represent more than 50 percent of the local labor force, according to the ULI.

The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation is

hosting a public forum to discuss ways to increase

workforce/affordable housing in Collier

County. Join us to share your ideas and hear

professionals, community leaders and nonprofits

working on the frontlines of this critical issue.

Where: Headquarters Library

2385 Orange Blossom Dr. Naples, FL 34109

When: Monday, September 10 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

For more information: 239-263-9400

The Collier County Public Library does not support or endorse this program.

Community Forum: Join the

Conversation

“Workforce” housing is described in the studies as “generally, housing that is aff ordable to households earning between 60 and 120 percent of AMI. In high-cost areas, incomes may be as high as 150 percent of AMI.”

The idea of aff ordable housing appears to be rubbing some residents the wrong way. In February, the BCC issued requests for information (RFI) from developers for proposals for two county-owned sites about the potential for locating or co-locating a new residential development on them. A few busloads of residents from gated communities showed up to protest when a site near them that had been zoned for a park was one of the two county-owned properties. What type of housing could be built was not specifi ed—multi-family or single-family, market rate or moderately priced—in the RFI. Nonetheless, the resounding feedback was: Not in my backyard.

“People are remembering where they came from, from the Midwest and New England, and remembering what they built there in the ‘50s,” said Collier County Commissioner Penny Taylor, District 4. “If we do not make room for aff ordable workforce housing, or attainable housing, we don’t have much of a future. We’ve got the climate, we’ve got the environment. We can’t attract them [new residents and workers] unless we have enough housing or the possibility of building housing.”

Ask private and government employers how the lack of aff ordable housing is impacting their workforces, and they will tell you they are off ering highly competitive salary and benefi ts packages, and sometimes housing incentives. There’s only so much wiggle-room recruiters have within established budgets, and salaries can only go so high. When Arthrex decided to build a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina, one of the reasons it cited was lack of aff ordable housing—becoming a lost job-generator here.

At the same time, unemployment rates are at historic lows, giving job-seekers the advantage. The Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club was short-staff ed this summer, unable to fi ll all open positions. What will happen during high season? General manager Jason Parsons said that many in the hospitality and restaurant industries are driving a half hour or more to get to their jobs in Naples. Parsons worries that in-town establishments will continue to fi nd it diffi cult to fi nd all manner of help—managers, servers, housekeepers, groundskeepers and engineers—because those traveling from Charlotte and Lee counties have plenty of opportunities closer to home. “It’s going to be diffi cult to get them to travel 30, 40, 50 minutes to get to work in season, when they’re passing other job opportunities along the way. Lee County is growing and growing. They don’t need to come to Naples anymore,” Parsons said. “People need to provide for their family and are looking for a job. It only makes sense to cut down on travel time and the cost of travel.”

The Collier County Community Housing Plan agrees with Parsons’ assessment. “The inconvenience and cost associated with commuting” results in traffi c congestion and automobile emissions, it says, while “providing access to housing close to jobs” can increase leisure time and reduce commuting costs that cut into take-home pay.

Forty-fi ve percent of the Collier County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) employees live outside of Collier County, mainly in Lee, Charlotte and Hendry counties, said Collier County EMS Chief Tabatha Butcher. EMS requires employees to live within a 60-mile radius of its headquarters, so most new hires are already living somewhere nearby. But it was a diff erent case when Butcher was trying to fi ll a $90,000 position for a helicopter pilot after the department lost two pilots to attrition. “We’ve had such a challenge fi lling those vacancies,” she said. The recipient of an off er “did turn it down because of aff ordable housing. Once he started looking around, he said he couldn’t aff ord to live here.”

NCH Healthcare System has a little more than 4,500 employees, including contract staff . About 26 percent live outside of Collier County. NCH Human Resources Director Renee Thigpen said the system hires an average of 1,000 annually. For critical areas of need, bonuses and relocation reimbursement may be off ered. “Aff ordable workforce housing is a concern for us. If we can’t hire the people and bring them here becausethey have no place to live, it aff ects our business and the service we provide to the community,” she said.

The hospital used to provide its own apartments to many of its 250 regular, seasonal employees, though the apartments are no longer available. Ten apartments leased by the hospital today are generally used for medical residents. Now, many seasonal employees are off ered a $2,000 housing stipend per month. Most are registered nurses, physical and respiratory therapists. “It’s hard to fi nd housing for that in our area,” Thigpen said. “These folks often need furnished apartments. Sometimes they buddy-up and share apartments or go out of the community to fi nd one.”

Source: Urban Land Institute

Who iscost-burdened

in Collier County?

Those in job sectors that make up more

than 50 percent of all jobs in Collier County

PUBLIC SAFETYParamedics, Firefighters,

Law Enforcement

HEALTH CARENurses, Nursing/medical assistants, Support Staff

EDUCATIONTeachers, Teacher Assistants,

Support Staff

SERVICE WORKERSWait and Hotel Staff,

Retail/Trade Salespeople, Golf Course and

Landscape Maintenance

ENTRY/MID-LEVELBank Tellers,

Government Employees, Administrative Assistants

Collier County 2018 Income Limits and Rent Limits Area Median Household Income (AMI): $75,000 Housing Income Limit by Number of Persons in Household Percentage 1 2 3 4 Status 30% $15,750 $18,000 $20,780 $25,100 Extremely low-income 50% $26,250 $30,000 $33,750 $37,500 Very low-income 80% $42,000 $42,000 $54,000 $60,000 Low-income 120% $63,000 $63,000 $81,000 $90,000 Moderate 140% $73,500 $84,000 $94,500 $105,000 Gap The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes AMIs annually.

AMI is used to determine the eligibility of applicants for most housing assistance programs.

Habitat for Humanity of Collier County is building its fi rst multi-family housing development, Dockside, due to lack of large parcels for planned developments. Dockside will help 44 residents become condo owners. Courtesy: Habitat for Humanity of Collier County

Same Problem, New Solutions:

Overcoming Housing Affordability Challenges?

By Michael Dalby, President/CEO, Greater Naples Chamber

of Commerce

Housing aff ordability has been part of our community

conversation for years.

In the 2014 Opportunity Naples study, community members

noted that those in the “middle” couldn’t fi nd aff ordable places to live and this could be a challenge

to diversifying our workforce.

The Community Needs and Assets Assessment echoes

those concerns. Citizens are still worried that housing costs are

driving middle class workers out of Collier County. And nearly

two-thirds of survey participants said available housing options

considered “aff ordable” are few and far between.

At the Chamber, we hear from employers who say housing

is often a barrier to recruiting and retaining talent. We hear countless stories of rejected

employment off ers because of housing sticker shock. Workers complain about long commute

times, and employers are concerned over brain drain

because of the limited housing options for future Neapolitans.

These issues aren’t unique. Communities across the country

are trying to answer the same question: How can we overcome housing aff ordability challenges?

We are working with community partners to create sensible

solutions for Collier County. Chamber staff participated in and supported the eff orts

of the Collier County Housing Stakeholders Committee

and the Aff ordable Housing Advisory Committee. And we

encouraged the Collier Board of County Commissioners to adopt,

with some modifi cations, the Community Housing Plan.

The housing plan recommended expediting the permitting and

approval process, allowing cost-saving infrastructure options

and fi ne-tuning the impact fee program. But administrative changes won’t be enough to

encourage the development of rental and single-family housing

that is cost-attainable.

There is a cost associated with creating and expanding workforce housing, and we

support eff orts to incentivize developers to build aff ordably

for a multitude of users. We’re of the opinion that creating a wide

variety of workforce housing options should be a broad public responsibility and should not be funded solely through property-

based taxes and fees.

Collier County is attempting to address housing aff ordability

through the seven-year, one-cent infrastructure sales surtax on the

November ballot. If approved by voters, $20 million would be placed into a workforce housing

land trust to incentivize the construction of attainable rental

and single-family homes on county-owned properties.

Addressing housing aff ordability is key to our community’s

continued economic health and quality of life. While it’s diffi cult

to gauge how much talent we will lose because of rising

housing costs or long commutes, county leaders must make

forward-thinking decisions to place Collier on the right track.

If young registered nurses can’t aff ord to live here, what about seniors living on a fi xed income? One of the most vulnerable segments of our population is falling through the cracks.

Dr. Jaclynn “Jackie” Faff er, president/CEO of the Naples Senior Center at JFSS, became alarmed during a 10-month period in 2016, when her organization was contacted by 21 senior women who were homeless or about to be evicted. They were low- to middle-income women “who had never been homeless before.” One eye-raising case was the former resident of Pelican Bay whose family had malevolently manipulated her fi nancial net worth.

Today, they are working with three who are homeless (living in their cars) and seven on the verge. “We have 33 senior clients who could become on the verge. They are desperately in need of aff ordable housing,” she said. Of these, 35 percent are paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing; another 18 percent are paying more than 50 percent. “All it takes is a medical crisis, or any crisis, like Hurricane Irma, to put them over the edge.” Faff er is still “hearing from seniors whose homes are in disrepair” a year after Irma.

Federal housing Section 8 vouchers to assist low-income renters, including seniors, aren’t available. Faff er said the waiting list is closed. “It may as not exist here. When you think about seniors, they won’t survive the waiting list. Nationally, it’s three to fi ve years. Here, it’s simply closed.”

The Naples Senior Center helps clients with fi nancial and food assistance, case management, and simply helping them fi nd housing elsewhere. Faff er said that other communities have successfully built congregate senior housing outside of the town center connected to the local transportation system. “It can be built a little out of the mainstream, and you put infrastructure around it. It costs money but we have to take care of our seniors,” she said.

Many senior center clients don’t have family nearby. Some are couples eking by together. “The poverty that our agency sees…these people paid their dues and they worked their entire lives, and never thought they’d be in this situation,” she said. Isolation, with the cost of living outgrowing their ability

to aff ord where they are aging in place “is the most pervasive problem facing seniors,” Faff er said.

According to a study by Florida Gulf Coast University, poverty and the need for federal food assistance for those aged 60 and over in Collier County, Bonita Springs and Estero increased signifi cantly between 2011 and 2015 due to population increase “likely coupled with increased costs of living,” it noted. By 2040, the Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research projects a 49.4 percent increase in the 60-plus population.

Fifty-eight-year-old Irma Valdez, and her husband, Silverio, made the fi nal mortgage payment last year on the three-bedroom home they bought for $47,000 through Habitat for Humanity of Collier County in 1997. The couple, with two sons, turned to Habitat after they were forced to leave their Bonita Springs trailer park after it fl ooded in epic summer storms and lived with relatives until they were forced into apartments they could not aff ord.

With retirement ahead, “it’s a peace of mind. I don’t know where we would be without this house,” Irma Valdez recently said. “It feels so good. We’re going to have some extra money and save it. Nobody can kick me out of here. It’s my house.”

Habitat for Humanity of Collier County has been turning low-income families into homeowners to provide them and their children a stable environment and a way to build their fi nancial resources since it was established in 1978. It has built and sold an average of 100 single-family homes each year for the last decade for families living within 80 percent of the AMI. “Most folks equate aff ordable with low-income housing. Aff ordability is important no matter how much money you earn. You want to live within your means,” Habitat CEO Rev. Lisa Lefk ow said. “It’s an important issue if you cannot fi nd an aff ordable home within your economic bracket.”

For the fi rst time, Collier Habitat is embarking on building its fi rst multi-family condo project with 44 units on six acres on Henderson Creek Drive featuring two fl oor plans and tin roofs. Lefk ow said it is shifting away from its single-family-home neighborhoods due to the lack of availability of large parcels zoned for planned developments. “As the county has grown, it changes the conversation. Whereas 10 to 15 years ago, there was plenty of land, today, we’re squared up against the Everglades. There’s not much left in terms of large parcels,” Lefk ow said.

The townhouse-style condos will be built through Habitat’s tradition model of using volunteer labor, except for roofi ng. The Schulze Family Foundation provided a matching grant for Habitat to purchase the acreage, which helped to defray cost to buyers. The remaining cost of the land will be spread amongst the 44 owners, rather than one. “We think the hard cost will be relatively the same (about $150,000),” said Lefk ow, who has been with the organization for 18 years. “It used to be there were builders and other nonprofi ts working to assist folks in the homeownership market. Today, we’re out there on our own. The price point of their product has gone up because it can. I understand the business model. It has unfortunately squeezed people out of homeownership.”

Private developers say that site requirements, restrictions on density—the number of homes or units that are allowed on a specifi c site—and impact fees skywards of $30,000 drive up the cost of residential homes and developments. “There are certain things that make Collier County a more expensive place to do business. Land’s expensive. At the end of the day, it’s math. It’s really quite simple. The costs get passed on to the homebuyer,” said Blake Gable, CEO of Barron Collier Companies, the creators of the town of Ave Maria, where the average price of a home is $300,000.Gable said the county needs to bend on density, site requirements and impact fees, and by all accounts, it appears the Board of County Commissioners is willing to do that.

No solution is a straight arrow. Establishing a vision and recognizing “that housing aff ordability aff ects all segments of the community” are the fi rst steps, according to the ULI. There are vehicles such as establishing a community land trust or housing land trust; or re-establishing an Aff ordable Housing Trust Fund; increasing and maintaining a supply of

aff ordable housing stock, and linking developments to public transportation.

The ULI made 35 recommendations, including fl exibility on density to put a focus on multi-family housing developments and on impact fees, calling them “an impediment to new construction of aff ordable housing.” The Collier County Community Housing Plan made 27 fi ne-tuned recommendations that the BCC has been considering in small batches since February.

Those that have been approved are being implemented by county staff , Giblin said, and the BCC was expected to vote on the fi nal block of recommendations in early October. Feasibility analyses on the two large county-owned parcels that were put out for RFI’s earlier this year are also being conducted to consider traffi c, infrastructure, schools and environmental concerns, and what types of developments are the best fi t, “so we have answers to those questions when the board does readdress those issues,” said Giblin.

Ability Housing looked at a number of combinations of housing on a specifi c county-owned parcel based on a mix of AMI’s in a development of 75 units, noting that $1.2 million would still be needed to defray costs to make it aff ordable to teachers, healthcare workers and public safety personnel.

Greater Naples Chamber CEO Michael Dalby agrees with Gable that the county has to be willing to be fl exible but “you don’t do it for everybody”—only for an aff ordable housing developer with a solid track record. “When you’re trying to deal with an issue that’s been going on for a number of years, it takes two things to change,” Dalby said. “One is dedicated leadership to understand the issue and make it a priority. Second is funding. You have to have a commitment of funding toward it.”

Seniors: An Overlooked Population

In the Works: Finding Solutions

The Naples Senior Center at JFSS provides socialization, dementia respite and social services for local seniors—a population that is projected to rise dramatically. When seniors on a fi xed income are priced out of their homes, where can they go? Courtesy: Naples Senior Center at JFSS

A mother and her children celebrate closing on their Habitat home—ready to move in. Courtesy: Habitat for Humanity of Collier County