Affordable Housing Action?

Last week the city heard from a consultant about what he would do to help with our affordable housing issue. Patrick Phillips works for Economic Research Associates (ERA) and has extensive experience in this arena. Basically ERA met with a variety of stakeholder groups, pulled together ideas and data about Sarasota. They will come back in June to present recommendations based on this input and their expertise, to the City Commissioners and recommend potential policy decisions that should help.

In his comments, Phillips noted that housing pressures are widespread; he mentioned Washington, DC and Miami as having rapidly rising housing prices that are creating issues like Sarasota is seeing.

His initial impressions included:

• Affordability is a regional issue
• The County is ahead of the City in dealing with the issue
• It needs to be viewed and addressed as a regional issue
• The city has local, acute issues including gentrification and displacement, neighborhood compatibility, scale and historic preservation issues
• Loss of affordable rental units
• Some mid-income families have limited access to funds for "fixing-up" and are facing pressure to sell

He stated that density is not the only answer to affordability, and that jobs, traffic and housing are inter-related. In fact he warned the commissioners that he’s wary of higher density overlay districts because they are not a guarantee of affordability and if not used properly could lead to less affordable housing and compatibility problems. Commissioner Fredd Atkins commented: "We are exactly who we wanted to be twenty years ago, and that’s become a problem."

We are pleased that the commissioners are addressing the issue. Sarasota has a long history of planning and discussion followed by indecision before taking action when it is long past due(remember the bridge?). We hope some decisive action is in our near term future.