The following article appeared in ABC 7 on November 22, 2024:
The Affordable Housing Summit 2.0 took place on Friday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
Affordable housing continues to be an issue on the Suncoast. This event brought together speakers and policymakers talking about solutions for those in need of affordable housing.
Heather Kasten, President and CEO of The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Sarasota, said “These are people that are critical to our community, people like teachers, policemen and firemen and our young professionals, it’s our future workforce. At the chamber we serve the business community looking out ahead. Without having adequate housing and affordable housing for those entry level, mid-level management positions, we have people leaving our community or choosing not to come here.”
The Heroes Village in Sarasota was also talked about. That’s going to be a place that is opening soon, providing affordable housing for our homeless veterans.
“It would give these 10, 15, 20 veterans an opportunity to kind of catch up with life,” said Jon Thaxton with Gulf Coast Community Foundation. “We’ll offer them support services if they need them, finding jobs or getting better paying jobs. Most importantly we’re going to take away that burdensome housing expense, veterans will be spending no more than 30% of their income with housing.”
The ribbon cutting on Heroes Village will take place over the next month or so.
Kasten says the high cost of living and the large amounts of people moving here has created this affordable housing crisis. She says it’s going to take everybody working together to solve this problem.
“It is going to take the business community showing up, it’s going to take our non-profits and our foundations showing up and it’s going to take government officials and policymakers all coming together to talk about potential solutions,” said Kasten.
This is the second year in a row this Affordable Housing Summit has taken place.
