Housing crunch squeezes evacuees
Social-service agencies scramble to
find vacancies in the saturated local market
by April Hunt
The Orlando Sentinel
September 11, 2005
The work is here. The housing is not.
Gulf Coast evacuees who resettle in Florida because of Hurricane Katrina will have no trouble finding jobs, officials predict.
But no one has any idea where those folks -- more than 5,000 in the Orlando area alone -- will live in a state that already has housing shortages.
"We're playing housing musical chairs," said Greg Mellowe, the former executive director of the Florida Coalition for the Homeless and a housing advocate in Orlando. "Someone is going to get squeezed out."
In a rare consensus, politicians, local activists and social-service agencies agree that there wasn't enough housing to go around before the influx of people.
Speaking in Orlando recently, Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings emphasized the need to get evacuees back home or elsewhere once rebuilding efforts begin.
"Housing is going to be the issue because we don't have an overabundance of work-force housing available in our state anyway," Jennings said.
The federal relief effort is unlikely to help. Responding to state requests, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is sending portable trailers to house people only in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, spokesman James McIntyre said.
Only when available space is exhausted will the agency look at putting up similar homes in Florida, he added.
Affordable rentals are especially in demand.
About one in nine Orange County households spent more than half of their income on housing in 2002, the most recent year available, according to the Shimberg Center for Affordable Housing at the University of Florida.
The Orlando Housing Authority has only 14 vacancies right now and a waiting list of 5,000 people who already live in the area, said Executive Director Vivian Bryant.
The authority has had 12 applications from people displaced by the disaster, including one from Wanda Guy.
The 47-year-old insurance worker from New Orleans said she is waiting to hear if she will be among the few given priority for public housing. Until then, she is staying with relatives in a crowded house.
"We have like four families staying in one household," Guy said. "We have gotten vouchers for support and transportation only, but our main concern right now is housing."
Local officials expect the problem will worsen in the coming weeks, as evacuees staying with family and friends like Guy begin to wear out their welcome.
That is why Catholic Charities of Orlando -- which has extensive experience resettling war refugees -- is asking parishioners to help find permanent housing rather than opening their homes.
The charity had success finding rentals for an extended family of 18, President Arne Nelson said. But others are still in need.
"There's a lot of people with their hands in the air," Nelson said. "We have to figure out how to solve this."
Part of the problem locally has been that the increase in land prices has kept new apartments from sprouting, said Gary Scarboro, government-affairs director for the Florida Apartment Association.
The condo craze is also to blame. More than 16,000 apartments were converted to condos in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties during the past year, Scarboro said. That has driven the occupancy rate to more than 97 percent.
So when the association asked property managers to offer vacancies, it was no surprise the request drew only one or two open units at most area complexes.
CED-Concord Management, one of the nation's largest affordable-housing management firms, answered the call and said it would give free September rent to evacuees at its 145 complexes in nine states, leasing director Lori Trainer said.
The Maitland-based firm has only 20 vacancies among its 6,000 Central Florida apartments.
"Unless people are willing to relocate to more rural areas, there is nothing available," Scarboro said.
Some urban space is available, just not in Central Florida. Miami-Dade County is offering to house 3,000 people in vacant housing, part of a national effort coordinated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That move might not be enough. Some activists are calling for the agency to issue housing vouchers, as it did after Hurricane Andrew more than a decade ago, to get people into existing vacancies and to immediately begin building more units.
"There is not going to be enough housing here unless something specific is done to create it," Mellowe said. "Otherwise, we're looking at a major crisis."
Victor Manuel Ramos of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. April Hunt can be reached at 407-420-6269 or ahunt@orlandosentinel.com.