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Efforts gain traction with local employers
(Palm Beach Post, The (FL) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 17--Palm Beach County's workforce housing goals suddenly seem, well, workable.
After months of workforce-housing meetings, local employers -- often lacking from the discussions -- answered a call Wednesday to come to the table. Led by the Housing Leadership Council of Palm Beach County, area businesses joined lenders and nonprofit community agencies in roughly equal numbers -- nearly 200 people in all -- in a packed conference room at the Marriott hotel on Okeechobee Boulevard.
They listened to executives from major employers and community agencies from other high-cost areas around the country give presentations at the event, "Employer Assisted Housing: Options and Opportunities."
They provided real-life examples about how various employer-assisted housing programs work for them.
"I look around this room and I see housing professionals, key policymakers and the business community," said Robin Snyderman, housing director for the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago. "That's what's needed to move forward."
A study commissioned last year by the Housing Leadership Council showed that 90 percent of households in the county could not afford to buy the median-priced home, which was about $392,000 at the time.
With low-paying service jobs accounting for 87 percent of the county's employment, an often overlooked consequence of the five-year housing boom was a housing affordability gap of more than $200,000.
This gap -- the difference between what the county's workforce can afford to pay for housing and what homes cost -- astounded the lead researcher of the study, Ned Murray, associate director of The Metropolitan Center at Florida International University in Miami.
"The widespread level of unaffordability among Palm Beach County's municipalities is striking," Murray wrote in the study, released in June. "In fact, 29 of the 37 municipalities in Palm Beach County show affordability gaps for single-family-home purchase. In 26 of these municipalities, the affordability gap exceeds $100,000."
That means homes cost at least $100,000 more than what workers in 26 municipalities in Palm Beach County can afford to pay.
While local home prices have begun to fall, homeownership still remains out of reach for most of the county's workforce. In March, the median price of an existing single-family home was $375,100. (April's home-sales report comes out Friday.) In addition, Palm Beach County's condo conversion craze removed thousands of rentals from the market. In West Palm Beach alone, more than 4,500 apartments were converted to condos last year, the study said.
The housing study -- the first of its kind in Palm Beach County -- also revealed for the first time the other side of the housing imbalance: Employers, too, were hurting.
Nearly 71 percent of the county's large employers (those with 100 workers or more) said sky-high home prices had hurt their recruitment efforts. Snyderman told a story at Wednesday's meeting that compared this region's double-digit run-up in home prices with Chicago's price hike.
A surprised Snyderman said she was amazed at the similarities: "I heard doctors in Fort Lauderdale couldn't afford to buy homes."
Neither can local university professors, said Kevin Hayes, senior vice president of residential lending for Regent Bank. A local university, Hayes said, routinely asks him to find homes that newly hired professors can afford. "I'm here to try to get ideas for the employers who come to me." Hayes said he has designed an employer-assisted housing program for Regent Bank that finances the employer's contribution, in addition to down-payment assistance and closing-cost assistance for employees.
"Not a One-Size Fits All Program" was the title of one of the workshops at the event held at Marriott. Karel Weigel, community relations administrator for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., explained how her world-famous hospital leveraged more than $4 million in donations -- including a major gift from the hospital itself -- to jump-start a community land trust.
From Missouri, Nikki Weinstein, director of nonprofit Focus St. Louis, guided employers in the room through strategies to combat NIMBYism ("not in my back yard").
"People think if you're working, you should be able to pay your bills and afford a home," she said. "That's simply not true. People are struggling even though they're working."
Her group partnered with mortgage giant Freddie Mac and local agencies to help small companies get employer-assisted programs up and running.
Tony Shields, community relations manager for Milwaukee-based motorcycle icon Harley-Davidson, told how his Fortune 300 company made its employer-assisted housing program.
"Our EAH program is hands-on, neighborhood-based," he said. "It's something anyone can do."
Lending credibility and urgency to Wednesday's meeting were the high-level national sponsors, a coup for the local organizers. They included Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the widely respected National Housing Conference of Washington.
To see more of The Palm Beach Post -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.palmbeachpost.com.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Palm Beach Post, Fla.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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