Thaxton Joins Panel 
On Attainable Housing

Gulf Coast’s Jon Thaxton told a roomful of regional business leaders this morning that “we’ve created the perfect storm” in terms of conditions that put housing out of reach for more and more hard-working residents in our community.

Thaxton joined three other experts for a Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce panel discussion on the affordable housing challenge. The panel was moderated by Chamber president Steve Queior.

Panelists noted that the problems associated with a lack of attainable workforce housing reach far beyond the financial consequences for those unable to afford places to live. Employers are constrained as they struggle to hire workers who aren’t able to live in those areas; congestion issues are created or exacerbated as people are forced to commute longer from areas that they can afford; and so on.

Locally, the reality is very problematic, as the share of Sarasota County residents who qualify as “housing cost burdened” (i.e., those who pay more than 30% of their income for housing) is significant. According to a report commissioned last fall by Gulf Coast, more than 43,000 households in the county exceed that threshold. The study, conducted by the Florida Housing Coalition, also found that nearly 18,500 of those households spend over half of their income on housing, a situation called “severely cost burdened.”

“The demand for services provided by low-wage jobs has steadily and significantly increased,” noted Thaxton. “The supply of housing for individuals filling those jobs simply hasn’t kept pace.

“The reality is that the community has a workforce with a variety of wage levels,” he continued. “You need to have available housing to match that continuum. Period.”