Where should 20,000 affordable housing units rise in Palm Beach County? New study helps ID areas of distress

The Housing Leadership Council of Palm Beach County, a coalition working to sustain economic viability through housing opportunities, is forging ahead with its plan to create 20,000 affordable housing units over the next 10 years.

And now, the council has a better idea of where to target those efforts, thanks to the results of a housing equity study conducted and released by Florida International University on Wednesday.

Many parts of the county could benefit: One study map, titled the Community Distress Index, shows vulnerable communities include the central part of the county, including neighborhoods just west of I-95, as well as communities running north toward West Palm Beach. The map also shows rural communities in the northwest part of the county that also may benefit.

“The Housing for All plan has a very ambitious goal,” said Jack Weir, one of the council’s board of directors. “20,000 affordable units over the next 10 years. We didn’t want to clutter it with a lot of nuance, that’s the goal.”

The Housing Leadership Council presented its “Housing for All” plan to the County Commission on Oct. 3, seeking funding assistance from the county’s recently approved $200 million bond. Now, the council has increased direction on where the greatest areas of need exist.

Affordable housing programs on both local and federal levels often use a measure called area median income, or AMI, to determine where critical demand is, said Ned Murray, one of the study’s primary researchers and the associate director of FIU’s Metropolitan Center. AMI is the midpoint income distribution in a certain region; half of the households in that specific region make less than the median, and the other half of the households make more than the median income.

The problem with that approach is the income categories within the AMI frequently far exceed the incomes of the communities where it applies, which “expands the pie,” Murray said.

“The fact of the matter is, if we are truly going to create more equity, we focus in on the communities where we’re going to find that most of the population is probably below 80% of the AMI,” Murray said. “We don’t have the funding that we used to have from federal and state years ago. So we really need to do a better job of targeting those funding resources and then leveraging them.”

The study analyzed factors such as contributors to community distress, poverty rates, race and ethnicity concentrations and the origins of settlements across the county to more strictly pinpoint needs in specific areas.

Though the Housing Leadership Council has not yet identified where the 20,000 units will go, FIU researchers did outline municipalities in the county where poverty rates remain “excessively high,” including Belle Glade, Mangonia Park, Lake Worth Beach, Riviera Beach and South Bay.

HLC gathered with community partners and county officials on Wednesday morning in Riviera Beach to discuss the findings of the study and plans for the future with a panel of housing experts.

Patrick J. Franklin, the president and CEO of Urban League of Palm Beach County and a panelist at the Wednesday event along with Weir, said the affordable housing goal coupled with the new equity study promotes further education and awareness about the problems resulting from the county’s housing crisis and income disparities.

“Studies like this … bring this problem that’s been there all this time, bring it to life and make sure people understand that we have to do something about it,” he said. “And if we don’t change, we’re going to continue to do the same thing.”

Findings from the study

The Gini Index, which measures income inequality on a 0 to 1 scale, with 0 indicating perfect equality and 1 indicating perfect inequality, recently gave Palm Beach County a 0.52, one of the highest in the state.

The national Gini Index measurement in 2021 was 0.49.

Another measure of inequality the study discussed was the “95-20 ratio,” which focuses on the difference between households earning more than 95% above all other households and households earning more than only 20% of all other households.

According to the study, the county’s 95-20 ratio is now at nearly 23%, which is even higher than the record high percentage it set in 2019 at about 19%.

Murray discussed how the conversation around housing equity, which he defined as inclusion, economic access and the choice of where to live now and in the future regardless of one’s characteristics, begins with the narrative about the original Black settlements not only in Palm Beach County but down the state’s east coast, from St. Augustine to Miami and along Dixie Highway and the Interstate 95 corridor.

“We have to think in terms of those settlements, the origins of those settlements, how they’ve evolved and where they’re at today,” he said. “That’s where this discussion really lies, is where are these communities today and what can we do to make sure that these settlements are enriched.”

Palm Beach County, like its Broward and Miami-Dade counterparts, is becoming a majority-minority county in terms of population, Murray said. Equity issues, such as homeownership and housing security, are becoming more pronounced, he said.

One way researchers identified areas of critical need was at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they created a community distress index to map communities in the county most vulnerable to the health and economic impacts of the virus. The index identified types of distress falling into one of four categories: socioeconomic status, household composition and disability status, minority status and language, and housing and transportation.

Like the Gini Index, different areas in the county were assigned a community distress index score on a 0 to 1 scale. The higher the figure, the greater the distress.

County Commissioner Mack Bernard, who also spoke during the presentation of the study, said the commission receives daily calls from families living in their cars or in parks.

“In order for us to address affordable and workforce housing in Palm Beach County, we cannot do it alone,” he said.