MESSAGE ABOUT OUR PROGRESS ON FAIR HOUSING

At the October 2023 Community Problems Assembly, the SURE network members voted to carry forward Affordable Housing as our main problem to research and address as a body. This isn't the first time that we have addressed Affordable Housing - or the lack thereof - in Sarasota County, so there was some concern about what could be done. Throughout the end of 2023 and into 2024, our committee identified various people - public officials, housing experts, developers, etc. -  to start having the conversation about what could be done to address the crisis that is raging here.

Through the course of these meetings, we learned that there was a large shift in the public discourse on what could, or should, be done. The Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) conducted a study of Sarasota County's housing needs and published a list of twelve different recommendations as to how our local governmental bodies could begin creating a solution; we learned that the City Commissioners were making a serious effort to enact as many of the AHAC recommendations as possible and that the Sarasota County Chamber of Commerce was fully throwing their weight behind supporting most of the recommendations on a local and state level. The Chamber's CEO, Heather Kasten, and City Commissioner Member At-Large Debbie Trice attend our Nehemiah Action in March 2024 in order to show their support for Affordable Housing solutions.

Unfortunately, we also learned that little to no movement was being made at the county level. We met with two county commissioners who had very different ideas on what the county should be responsible for doing in regard to aiding their own constituents. Commissioner Mark Smith, District 2, declared that he "wanted to be a champion for this cause" at our initial sit-down. When he attended our Nehemiah Action in March, he publicly committed to drafting a plan for the county that would include all twelve AHAC recommendations. 

While these steps are exciting and signal a good change in the public discourse regarding Affordable Housing and governmental responsibility, there is still a lot of work left to do. 

• The median price for a single-family home in Sarasota County rose over 27% to $482,803.(Sarasota Magazine, “Inside Sarasota’s Affordable Housing Crisis,” July 2022)

• Half of all renters in Sarasota County are considered rent-burdened - meaning that they use more than 30% of their income on rent. (Sarasota Magazine, “Inside Sarasota’s Affordable Housing Crisis,” July 2022).

• Sarasota has 18,000 households spending in excess of 50% of their annual income on housing. (Jon Thaxton's quote in The Drift, “A Quarter Century of Housing Growth with One Crucial Piece Missing.” 2023)

• A total of 76,613 households in Sarasota County are cost-burdened. (Gulf Coast Community Foundation Blueprint for Workforce Housing, October 2018).

• The backbone of our community is breaking. The workforce of Sarasota County - the teachers, bartenders and waitstaff, the caddies, firefighters and police officers, the municipal government employees - cannot afford to live in the county that they have dedicated themselves to working for.

Living where you work shouldn't be a luxury, but in Sarasota County, that is what it has become.