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ORLANDO, Fla. – Central Florida’s housing has not kept up with its population boom, and it’s even more dire when it comes to the availability of affordable housing.
Metro Orlando has the fourth-highest deficit in the United States with only 18 affordable units available for every 100 extremely low-income renters, according to a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The report found Las Vegas had the widest gap with just 13 available units available followed by Houston (15 units) and Dallas (17 units). Extremely low-income describes a family at or below 30% of the area’s median income.
Central Florida’s numbers, while staggering, are actually an improvement from last year when Orlando had the second most severe shortages.
“It’s trending in the right direction,” said Ryan von Weller, COO of Wendover Housing Partners. “I don’t know personally if that’s due to more inventory becoming available or more people moving out of that income bracket. A combination of both most likely, but certainly, we should still be very concerned about the state of Central Florida in this industry.”
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News 6 toured Wendover’s newest affordable housing complex in Sanford called Monroe Landings. Every unit at the complex – all 144 – is dedicated solely for extremely low-income renters with space across the street for an additional 144 units.
Even though the units are considered affordable housing, they look exactly like market-rate apartments.
“A lot of our competitors and people in this space throughout the country don’t provide a washer and dryer,” von Weller said. “Every apartment is going to have a refrigerator, a range, a kitchen sink, but the washer and dryer for a lot of residents is a game changer.”
Whenever Wendover opens a new affordable housing development, von Weller said that applications always outpace the number of available units.
“We’re lacking all types of housing,” he added. “People are coming here too fast for homebuilders to keep up, for apartment builders, and certainly for our industry in affordable housing. Everything is becoming compressed and there’s more desire for all the product types than there is actual product out there.”
Debbie Padgett is getting ready to move into her $500 per month two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit at Monroe Landings, but she understands the struggle many are facing finding availability.
“It’s been a journey,” she said. “It’s trying because it seems like they’re not out there, and if they are, they’re full.”
It’s been a long time since Padgett has had a place to call her own. She spent the better part of a decade homeless, bouncing around shelters and hotels in Orlando.
“I just wanted to have a bed, a shower, stuff like that, and go to work,” she added. “I worked most of the time when I was in these shelters and did side jobs when I was in the streets, so it wasn’t like I was out there begging for money.”
The lack of affordable inventory and the rising cost of living as a whole have led to an increase in homelessness across Central Florida.
“Everybody who’s on the streets is not a druggie, they’re not an alcoholic, they’re not a thief, they’re not a felon, they’re not a crackhead,” Padgett said. “You know, there are people who lost their job, lost their house, all that kind of stuff. That’s how I ended up there.”
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s report also found Florida has the fourth highest deficit of affordable housing in the United States with more than 435,000 affordable units needed to meet the need.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Live Local Act in 2023, which funneled $711 million into affordable housing. The influx of money and regulatory changes has benefited the industry, according to von Weller, but more outreach is needed to change the public’s perception of affordable housing.
“There’s a stigma attached to it, and maybe rightfully so going back 30, 40, 50 years,” von Weller said. “When the government was operating and managing housing directly, you saw a lot of what people deemed projects, right? Where they became run down. We’re standing on a site that used to be owned by HUD where the buildings were eventually demolished because it became in such poor condition.”
Von Weller said public-private partnerships play a huge role in cutting into the deficit of available affordable housing units, so more folks like Padgett can get a new lease on life.
“The entire objective is to give people a hand up, not a handout,” he said. “You want to make sure you give them the tools to succeed, and some families need more than others.”
“I’m not a big fan of happy because I’m always waiting for the next shoe to drop,” Padgett explained. “I might have to reevaluate that thought because it’s pretty good right now.”
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