We hear much about affordable/work force/attainable housing. Unless there is a continuous government subsidy of those rents, this is a dream that is going nowhere.

I often see that commissioners, especially in Stuart, ask that some sort of set aside be done for these type units when approving new projects. While I am not against the attempt it is almost always futile even when the developer agrees. There will just never be enough of whatever you would like to call this type of submarket housing without the hand of the federal government.

Washington has stayed away from any new form of subsidized housing for a long time. Decades ago, it stopped building entire projects. Those that previously did come along ended up as slums worse than any tenement that it was to replace. The grand era of government-built housing projects that were prevalent in the 1930s through 1970s will probably never be repeated.

For awhile the feds, administered at times by the state, had a voucher system so that this segment of the population could be serviced by the private sector. This too fell out of favor by both cutbacks at the federal and state levels and private owners that felt there were too many rules to follow before you had the money. As a private owner, I use to dread the words “Do you take Section 8?”

In Martin County there is a way to have much more affordable/work force/attainable housing. It is by allowing the market to operate without so many restrictions. The more housing that is built, the easier it will be to meet the demand. As new housing comes online, the less desirable existing units become cheaper in price.

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Martin County needs several thousand additional units. These units need to be in multi-family buildings. The building of single-family homes will not drop the level of asking rents which would alleviate the shortages. Within our cities and in the county CRAs there needs to be greater density so that enough units can be built. If a developer can put 30 or more units per acre, then the price of each unit to build is lessened.

In new projects that doesn’t mean the rent will be lower for those units. The sheer increase in units being offered will drive down the prices at older developments. We have all heard of the supply and demand axiom. It is true.

What would really provide here and the rest of the U.S. even more units at more affordable prices would be a true voucher system. In the old Section 8 program, an owner could be required to have his property inspected by the government before the voucher was issued. It became a bureaucratic morass.

In a true voucher system, the tenant would apply for vouchers based on income. If accepted, then the voucher payment would go to the property owner each month for the duration of the lease. There would be no required inspections except those that would be performed and monitored by local code enforcement. Any sub-standard conditions would be addressed the same as if the tenant were paying the entire amount of rent without assistance.

Collusion or fraud by owner or tenant would be handled like any other theft of services. Audits could be performed to make sure that housing accommodations were being rented to the recipient of the voucher. There need not be an overabundance of red tape.

The main thing we must all remember is that the housing shortage for everyone can only be made better with more availability of units. We need to stop protesting every time something is being built. If anything, we should be encouraging more building especially of multi-family construction.