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Sarasota group calls attention to worsening rental market |
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Written by By DALE WHITE
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Saturday, 18 March 2006 |
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Sarasota group calls attention to worsening rental market SARASOTA -- Ongoing efforts to address this area's affordable housing shortage are leaving out lower-income workers who rely on rental housing, says a new group.
The recently organized Tenant-Landlord Coalition says that, so far, local government efforts have been aimed mostly toward home ownership opportunities for middle-income workers. But the very backbone of the work force has been left out, the coalition insists.
And it's headed to City Hall on Monday night to tell elected officials just that.
"The bottom line," said Newtown activist Nina Burwell, who will be one of the coalition's spokespeople before the City Commission, is that lower-cost rentals "are your affordable housing. If they go, your affordable housing goes."
The coalition is a loosely formed group backed by the Sarasota Landlords Association and several individuals in the Sarasota Public Housing Task Force.
They're working together because they all see "a perfect storm" of factors straining the rental market -- including rising taxes, condo conversions and limited subsidies for low-income tenants.
The city of Sarasota and Sarasota County are working on laws and policies intended to address a lack of housing for workers of moderate means.
Yet extremely low-income households (those earning $16,000 or less a year) and low-income households (those earning between $16,000 and $29,000) are unlikely to qualify, the coalition said.
"Many in this town make less than $29,000," the coalition stated in a position paper released this week. "They work everywhere -- in the hospital, for the city, waiting on your tables at your favorite restaurant, holding your mother's hand in the nursing home. ... All of the talk about affordable housing completely forgets these economic classes and the landlords who are trying to provide them safe and decent housing."
Taxes, condos and vouchers
The situation makes longtime renters, such as coalition organizer Jude Levy, wonder if and when they could be priced out of Sarasota.
Levy, a former city employee, describes herself as "a proud renter." The retiree lives in a studio apartment in a historic building within easy walking distance of many amenities. She prefers a maintenance-free lifestyle.
She knows that, every year, her landlord weighs how much of his increasing tax bill he can absorb and how much he must pass onto his tenants.
"All the while the real estate people people say to him, 'Here's my card,'" she said.
Because rental properties do not qualify for exemptions, landlords are getting slapped with hefty property tax increases every year. During the past three years, members of the Landlords Association say, their taxes have gone up by a third or more.
To pay their tax bills and stay in business, some of them sell properties or significantly raise rents. Others get out of the rental business altogether.
Apartment complexes are also being converted into condos. The evictees are finding few nearby vacancies with rents that won't gobble up most of their incomes.
Furthermore, the roughly 1,200 low-income households in Sarasota County that rely on federal vouchers to subsidize their rents risk finding more and more landlords opting out of that program because it's not covering their costs.
That worries the Sarasota Housing Authority and the Public Housing Task Force.
The authority intends to raze and redevelop its four apartment complexes in Newtown. All 388 households will receive rental vouchers so they can move into privately managed housing.
Yet no one knows how many of those who want to stay in Sarasota will find landlords who accept vouchers. Many of them may have to move to other counties, farther from jobs and the friends and relatives they rely upon for support.
Searching for solutions
Although they are raising the issue on a local level, the coalition and its supporters say some solutions may rest with state and federal lawmakers.
The Legislature should be heavily lobbied to grant property tax exemptions for landlords who rent to low-income tenants, Burwell said.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Congress must be lobbied to boost the federal rental voucher program, coalition members also said.
After a three-year freeze, the Sarasota Housing Authority recently raised the maximums it will pay to landlords who accept vouchers. Yet some landlords consider the increases too little and too late.
"Vouchers are not keeping up with the market rate," Tully Giaccomazzi, a spokesman for the Sarasota Landlords Association, said.
Meanwhile, about 1,200 applicants are on the authority's waiting list for vouchers and no new applications are being accepted.
In its presentation to the City Commission, the coalition intends to outline the political and economic factors that it sees as causes of a looming rental housing crisis. Admittedly, it won't have an abundance of solutions to suggest.
In its position paper, it stresses what it thinks is obvious: "Solutions were needed yesterday."
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 May 2006 )
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