A community-wide survey to gather information on what Southwest Floridians found to be the most pressing need identified affordable housing and homelessness as the top concerns.
Those concerns were highlighted after On the Table SWFL – an initiative that addresses social issues across Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties – held a forum March 30 where 4,000 residents came together in their respective counties to discuss social issues and solutions.
About a quarter of those participants took an anonymous survey to rank the issues their counties have been facing.
OTT partnered with Florida Gulf Coast University to analyze the data based on 811 respondents, with an age range of 19-87. Affordable housing and homelessness, together, accounted for 70% of the respondents’ number one priorities to address.
Southwest Florida has been at the foreferont of skyrocketing housing costs since shortly after the pandemic was identified and an already burgeoning homeless situation became even a larger concern after Hurricane Ian devastated the area in Sepotember 2022.
Participants also submitted anonymous comments:
- “Many issues that community members struggle with (housing insecurity, healthcare, education, transportation, employment, etc.) are directly related to the need for affordable housing,” one resident wrote.
- “People need to be able to work and live here, and affordable housing and mental healthcare are key to productivity and the health of our society,” another wrote.
Mental health and substance abuse, health care access and cost, and well-paying jobs and economic development ranked next in order, respectively, for needing urgent action.
Lindsey Touchette, vice president of Community Engagement for the Collier Community Foundation, was not surprised affordable housing was the top issue.
“We hear folks that have been here forever are being priced out of the area,” she said.
Touchette added that Collier is experiencing a recruiting crisis for health care workers and other essential workers because of housing prices, which decreases health care accessibility.
“These are so intertwined issues,” she said. “If you’re working on one, you’re working on another.”
Collier currently has projects in place to create more attainable housing. One such project, breaking ground in the fall, will convert a portion of the now-defunct Golden Gate Golf Course into an affordable housing complex for essential workers. Rent will be capped at 30% of each renter’s income.
Amy Huddleston, the director of Strategic Partnerships at the Charlotte Community Foundation, said housing costs are so high that many Charlotte residents are “one emergency away from being homeless.”
The county completed an 88-unit affordable housing complex around the end of last year. Jacaranda Place, located on the north end of Loveland Boulevard, offers discounted rent to low-income residents.
“It’s filling up very quickly, if not at capacity already," Huddleston said. “I just know that we need lots more [affordable housing] in our community.”
“We want to work together with our regional partners to help make substantial changes and to bring as many community voices to the table as possible,” she said, referring to other community foundations and nonprofits.
The first OTT was established in 2019 and hosted by the Collaboratory, SWFL’s problem-solving nonprofit. It was intended to be a recurring event, but the initiative was paused for three years because of the pandemic and then Hurricane Ian.
“But the importance of that is that this was even more important to the region's healing and recovery and the issues that were brought to light that were exacerbated by the storm,” Noelle Casagrande, the Collaboratory's communication lead, said.
“We also know, given what we learned and who participated in 2019, that there's been a move towards more diverse representation this time around,” she added.
There were three times more respondents this year than in 2019. “But we know we still have more work to do in terms of reaching more of the Hendry and Glades communities,” which accounted for 4% of the participants.
Amanda White, vice president of Government Relations & Research at the Florida Apartment Association, said over 6,000 apartments are being built in Fort Myers. The average rent is $1,900, and 7% of apartment units are vacant.
“These new units are likely to increase vacancy and moderate future rental growth rates,” she said.
Apartment vacancies in Naples “plummeted to 4% in 2021,” White said. But 1,700 new apartment homes are currently under construction, and 910 were completed within the last year.
“To put this into perspective, Naples' apartment inventory grew by 2,200 units in the past three years, which amounts to a 30% increase in overall inventory,” she said.
The average rent in Naples is $2,280, and the vacancy rate is 8.7%.
In Punta Gorda, there are 1,779 apartments being built. The average rent is $1,910, and the vacancy rate is 14%.
Max Stein, an assistant professor of anthropology at FGCU, was the principal investigator in analyzing the survey data.
“We wanted On the Table to be a forum where everyone felt like they could pull up a chair and discuss what matters to them,” he said.
Two-thirds of the survey respondents were female, and 65% were between the ages of 41 and 76. Of the respondents, 78% identified as white, 11% as Hispanic and 7% as African American.
Participants were asked about their five-year outlook on how social issues will be addressed in SWFL. Stein said that people who fell outside of the majority categories “tended to be slightly more optimistic.”
“I think that really feeds into the community foundation goal to increase diversity of perspectives and the importance of doing so as well,” he said. “Because you'll find that when you increase the voices that are heard that you learn a lot more about your community.”
Some other issues that fell within the top 10 included hunger and food insecurity, environmental issues and social justice and equality.
“Our region’s need knows no boundaries,” Casagrande said. “It is unprecedented that the community foundations have worked together on this project and also that the foundations are committed to mobilizing the action and supporting the collaboration necessary to address the priorities voiced.”
The full report can be accessed at https://onthetableswfl.com.
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