Can a teacher afford a home in Walton County?
By RUBY KEARCE
At the July 18 meeting of the Walton County Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) committee member Teresa Jones discussed apartment rentals and local housing sales. Jones started by discussing the summary of the average apartment rentals in the area. The average apartment rental in Santa Rosa Beach is approximately $2,700, and in Defuniak Springs $1,400.
Jones said that even though Walton County has the highest paid teacher salary in the Florida Panhandle, roughly paying around $40,000 a year, with current mortgage interest rates, teachers can’t even qualify for a $200,000 house, even if the teacher has no additional debts, such as a car payment. Jones said that the average sale price for a home in North Walton County is $250,000, meaning a single teacher could not afford a home in North Walton County.
Jones explained why she put together this analysis saying, “When we say affordable housing, it is people working as our everyday worker, it’s our county employees, it’s our city employees, its out nurses, it’s our teachers, it’s the people that we need to continue to provide valuable services in our area.” Jones committed to bring this report before the committee quarterly to compare numbers more frequently.
Committee Chair Latilida Hughes – Neel said she has trouble understanding how a single, first-year teacher, fresh out of college, making $42,000 could afford $1,400 dollar rent in DeFuniak Springs. Walton County Planning Director Mac Carpenter simply stated that they cannot. “Like most of us that went to college and found that first job, none of us could afford to live in an apartment or a house by ourselves, we had to get a roommate,” he said. “A new teacher that we desperately need in our county cannot afford to live here alone.”
Carpenter said that the morning of the meeting, the treasury released the maximum sales price by county for assistance through the SHIP program, as well as listing about 15 of the higher cost counties that exceed the state median for sales price. With Collier and Monroe County at the top of the scale, Walton County comes in next. Carpenter explained that Walton and Okaloosa Counties are set at $615,449, meaning that the ship program cannot assist anyone on a home that exceeds that price.
Hughes-Neel went on to state that the only program she can think of offering assistance to young adults is St Joe’s hospitality program, which subsidizes rent for their employees. Hughes-Neel has personal experience with this program since her son worked for the program straight out of high school and lived in an apartment with three other people, thus allowing him to afford the $450 a month rent. This allowed her son to have his rent subsidized by his employer rather than his parents, but Hughes-Neel feels that this is the exception in the Panhandle, not the rule.
Hughes-Neel asked the committee if anyone knew about anything underway to address insurance reform. Jones said that it appears as though they are working on it, but excessive hurricanes and false claims have hurt the insurance companies. Measures have been implemented, but it is going to take a few years of fewer claims for it all to settle.
Committee member and Walton County Commissioner Tony Anderson said that the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) proposed at the last budget hearing to drop Walton County’s Millage rate to help with insurance and inflation, saying it could not be dropped much but was reduced slightly.
Committee member Dr. Carolyn Zonia said that the main issue addressed at the two special legislative sessions held over the past two years is the reinsurance rate for the insurance companies, and have given the insurance companies $3 billion to purchase reinsurance. One of the developments in the legislature is an Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection, and one of the things they are looking at is preventing rebuilding in areas that are hard hit after hurricanes, especially coastal areas where sea levels rise and are more likely to be damaged from a hurricane or storm surge.
