The following article appeared in Sun News Media on November 20, 2024:
Recommendations involving funding for affordable housing, workforce supply and demand and mandatory inclusionary zones were discussed in length during Tuesday’s Sarasota County Commission meeting.
Sarasota County Affordable Housing Committee Member Jon Thaxton, a former Sarasota County commissioner, led the conversation.
“We solicit guest speakers and subject matter experts to review national best practices, which we then adapt to the service to the county conditions,” Thaxton said.
The committee is required by law for anyone who uses State Housing Initiatives Partnership money. Thaxton said all of the recommendations presented were adopted individually by a vote from a diverse committee.
“There is no silver bullet for affordable housing,” Thaxton said. “If there was, we would have fixed this problem a long time ago, but rather, it takes a comprehensive and a coordinated group of activities to be successful.”
The committee defines affordable housing as housing that requires no more than 30% of a household’s income. Spending more than 30% of one’s income on housing can take away income for things like food, clothing, water and other items.
The term used is “cost-burdened.”
“We still have an affordable housing demand that far exceeds its supply,” he said.
The committee’s recommendation list had 12 options with many of those being multi-faceted. Thaxton went over the last option, having eight parts to it for Sarasota County.
One of those recommendations talked about funding that would help offset the cost of housing to make it more affordable.
“The committee is suggesting that you take a portion of the tax increase that results from new development in the county,” Thaxton suggested. “The beauty and the simplicity of this is this is not money that you have budgeted somewhere else, so it’s new money that’s coming in each year.”
A portion of those funds could fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund 28 out of the last 32 years, Thaxton said.
“It’s a pretty solid bet that you will see increases in your taxable as a result of new development,” he said.
The committee also recommended more conversations that discuss affordable housing in tangent with land use. In short, land use meetings should have active conversations around the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of development decisions.
“If we’re going to get to the crux of this problem, we need to be talking about affordable housing with every decision that we make,” he said.
Mandatory inclusionary zones were also recommended. This targets sprawling developments that promise maintenance free lifestyles and concierge-like living.
“It takes a workforce to provide that lifestyle, but yet, there is no housing built to meet the demand of the new development for that service workforce,” Thaxton said.
The mandatory inclusionary zones would require supplying affordable housing for the demand that is being created from these developments. The committee suggested at least 15% of units should be designated as affordable for projects greater than 15 units.
Additionally, Thaxton recommended offering developers greater density then they are entitled to if they make some of it affordable housing and at least 15% of redeveloped commercial properties with a residential component be affordable.
“This is a great opportunity in Sarasota County, especially with so many of these centers in economic uncertainty,” he said. “These centers are located on transportation hubs.”
Most commercial properties are located near workforce and schools.
“The county should consider public private partnerships,” he said. “And we would also encourage governments themselves to work a little bit better together, such as the Hospital Board, the School Board, the County Commission, the city commissions”
Thaxton recommended the board allocate $20 million of Surtax IV funds for the purchase of land for affordable housing and restore and enforce original 2050 Resource Management Area affordable housing policies.
“Surtax money can only be used for the purchase of land,” he said. “Affordable housing cannot be used for capital improvements, but we’ve all seen the value of having the land taken out of the funding equation.”
Commissioner Mark Smith told the board that the group needs to keep these recommendations in mind for strategic planning coming up in December.
“The thing about market driven economy is that when the economy drops, the tide lowers and all the boats and I just know that when we went to the recession, I came within a day of losing my house to a short sale,” Smith said. “We need to help the folks that work here.”
Thaxton said, figuratively speaking, rising tides are supposed to raise all ships.
“That’s only if you have a ship,” he said. “If you don’t have a ship, you go underwater with the tide.”
The conversation comes back to “cost-burdened.”
“They’re living paycheck to paycheck, and they’re very vulnerable to things such as hurricanes, red tide outbreaks and economic conditions,” he said. “You have tens of thousands of them right here in your community that work among us, assure the quality of life that we all enjoy and many of them are Sarasota County employees.”
