Building more affordable housing in St. Johns County is a top priority for 2024.
Together, county officials and nonprofit groups are working toward solutions with efforts to incentivize workforce housing and income-restricted rental properties.
On Monday, a community meeting is happening at the Classic Car Museum of St. Augustine. A developer is asking residents to weigh in before they can rezone a property on Wildwood Drive to be designated for workforce housing. The developer plans to build around 650 homes in the county and if their plans are approved, 30% of those homes would be designated as workforce housing.
Some argue that would benefit everyone in St. Johns County and allow people like teachers, first responders, and hospitality workers to afford to live in the area.
St. John’s County is one of the fastest-growing counties in Florida and the United States, but home prices are historically unaffordable and average rent is more than $2,000 a month, which the St. John’s County Chamber of Commerce said is unaffordable for nearly all essential workers.
“Those people that are moving here make it really tough for local families to compete for the cost of housing, and they’re willing to pay more because they’re coming from a high housing cost area where there might have been, they might have sold their home for three-quarters of a million dollars. And they’re coming here with cash. So the local workforce can’t compete with that,” said Bill Lazar, Executive Director of the St. Johns Housing Partnership, who is part of the county’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee.
A solution they’re hoping helps keep more people in the county is workforce housing and offering incentives like down payment assistance and lower interest rates to essential workers.
Right now, the average cost of a home in St. Johns County is around half a million dollars.
“That’s crazy. I mean, that is not sustainable,” Lazar said. “If you want people to live and work, OK, whether it’s the hospital, whether it’s the sheriff’s office, whether it’s our school district, whether it’s somebody running a small restaurant or hotel, I mean, you got to say, where’s your workforce going to come from?”
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The Villages of New Augustine is an affordable housing complex through Ability Housing that is breaking ground on Wednesday. About 90 units will soon be available to anyone making 60% or less than the area median income. That’s about $50,000 a year for a one-person household.
“There’s been such tremendous amounts of population growth and investor interest snatching up homes, that the supply and demand is really challenged and the essential personnel that we all want in our neighborhoods, the teachers, the firemen, the hospital assistants, you name it, they’re all really struggling to find a place they can afford to live in St. Johns County,” said Ability Housing CEO Shannon Nazworth.
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