Winter Park faces affordable housing concerns

Is there room for low-income residents in Winter Park?

A group of Winter Park residents are distraught after learning they have to move out of their low-income duplexes to make way for a potential 30-unit townhome development, raising questions about whether the city has enough affordable rental housing.

Resident Perry Pryor didn’t know his neighborhood of 16 families was at risk until he saw a news story about the development about two months ago. The Winter Park resident has lived in his apartment with his wife Cheryl for almost two years. They were grateful to find a place with a rent costing between $700 and $800 after their previous home was foreclosed on, but they may be forced to relocate once again.

“We’re between a rock and a hard place,” Pryor said. “Our income is not going to be able to [pay to] live in housing more than $800 a month.”

“There’s nothing concrete right now.”

The Winter Park Planning and Zoning Board gave the townhome project a preliminary green light during its May 5 meeting. Pryor and other residents spoke out against tearing down the duplexes.

“They signed the lease and a lease has terms,” board chair James Johnston said. “I don’t want to be heartless, but we also have to deal with the situation in front of us.”

Pryor’s neighbor Karen Gray has already started looking for a new home for rent, but it hasn’t been easy to find anything affordable, she said.

“I’ve been looking; I’m trying to be proactive,” Gray said. “It’s too hard to find and it’s getting harder.”

Winter Park has tried to address a shortage of affordable rental housing in recent years. A 2012 study from the city’s planning and community development department showed that the number of rental properties costing below $750 a month was cut in half over the past decade, while rental homes costing at least $1,500 a month tripled.

The study also showed that more Winter Parkers are renting. Of the 11,995 occupied homes in Winter Park during 2010, 34.8 percent were rented – an increase of 12.5 percent since 2000.

The city took strides over the past two decades to give a boost to affordable housing in Winter Park by working with Habitat for Humanity to build 42 homes and partnered with the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust Inc. to build 19 more.

Winter Park took another approach back in 1990 when the city established an affordable housing linkage fee of 15 cents per square foot for new residential construction, paid for by the developers upon receiving building permits.

City Commissioners later voted to increase that fee to 50 cents, raising a total of $3.65 million over the past 24 years – money set aside in a trust fund to build more affordable housing.

The fee was reset to zero cents and suspended by the City Commission in September 2013 after Commissioners questioned its legality and purpose.

The struggle for affordable rental housing has reached new heights in cities like San Francisco, which faces some of the highest rent costs in the country. Rent for an average apartment in San Francisco during the first quarter of 2014 came out to $3,057, according to online real estate firm RealFacts.

An average of 161 eviction notices were given each month during the fiscal year 2012-2013, according to research from San Francisco’s Rent Board – a government entity created solely for hearing eviction-related cases and regulating rent.

Winter Park, Pryor said, appears to be transitioning into a community where “commoners” are no longer welcome.

“When you’re looking for a place to live and you’re low-income, you don’t come to Winter Park,” Pryor said.

The townhome development planned along Lee Road will go before the City Commission during the board’s June 8 meeting.