20,000 affordable housing units by 2032? Palm Beach County plans to decide

Amid surges of luxury living in Palm Beach County, efforts to balance out the housing field also continue to pop up.

The Housing Leadership Council of Palm Beach County’s “Housing For All” initiative, which will be discussed at Tuesday’s commission meeting, would aim to create 20,000 units of workforce and affordable housing by 2023 with various sources of funding and collaborations, including the county’s $200 million bond.

“The central recommendation of this Housing Plan is for our County to take control of its destiny through a $200 million local bond issue to develop, renovate, and preserve workforce and affordable housing in the County and its municipalities,” the Housing Leadership Council wrote in its plan. “This is one of many county efforts to help alleviate the affordability crisis.”

Nearly 20 years ago, the county’s economic council formed a work group to determine how the lack of affordable housing would impact the future, and that work group became the Housing Leadership Council, according to its website.

The $200 million bond invokes a bidding process for interested developers to submit proposals to the county. So hypothetically, if a developer submits a plan to the county for an apartment complex where half the residential units are luxury and the other half are affordable or workforce housing units and the project receives approval, the county would pay for the construction of the affordable units while the developer would be responsible for the construction of the luxury units.

“The bond proceeds will only cover their development gap,” said Jonathan Brown, the county’s Housing and Economic Development Director. “They still have to secure their own typical first mortgage or construction loan, any other assistance that they need from the state level, the developers will do all of that as they have normally done.”

“The bond just becomes an additional program that the county will use to help create those new affordable or workforce housing units.”

Another recent county effort to alleviate the affordability crisis occurred last month when the county announced a First-Time Homebuyer Program, where 50 families may receive up to $100,000 each to purchase their first homes. The application opens on Oct. 10.

About 4,000 new residential units are created in the county each year, the council wrote, but that falls short of the 6,000-unit demand.

While a “critical catalyst,” the HLC would need other sources of funding along with the $200 million to “increase the number of workforce housing units and achieve deeper income targeting.”

“The housing plan that was put together by Housing Leadership Council does not govern or have any control or say so over the county bonds, it was just one of multiple funding sources they were recommending,” Brown said.

Another aspect of HLC’s plan is to revitalize what the council calls “historically disinvested neighborhoods,” primarily located in eastern Palm Beach County.

“In a county where land is increasingly scare, these neighborhoods provide existing housing stock for rehabilitation, land for new housing and redevelopment opportunities,” HLC writes.

County commissioners will vote Tuesday on whether or not to proceed with the plan.

“If the housing plan is approved, Housing Leadership Council has advised us that it allows them to then take that plan to not only the other cities within the county to see if the cities will approve it, it also allows them to take the housing plan to foundations and say, ‘Hey, we need additional dollars,'” Brown said.