CAPE CORAL, Fla. — As struggles to find affordable housing continue for people in Southwest Florida, realtors along with local city and county leaders came together to discuss how more affordable housing properties can be made available.
Bill Steinke, President of the Royal Palm Coast Realtor Association said the supply continues to struggle to stack up to the demand in Southwest Florida.
“It's not like there is a mass of builders or labor force to relieve pressure like there had been in the past where you could build speculatively and the homes would be there when the need arose,” said Steinke.
A reality Steinke said is why they invited both realtors and local leaders to a housing symposium.
A fancy word for a meeting that will connect realtors to resources such as Habitat for Humanity and down payment assistance programs.
Cape Coral council-woman Gloria Tate tells me affordable housing impacts, everyone.
“I have some exciting news, senior affordable housing is coming to Cape Coral and it should be complete before the end of this year."
The project is called Madison Square, and a step in the right direction but not the end-all according to Tate.
“I think the only thing we can do is lobby our government for more assistance with building affordable housing, but the cost of construction, we can't expect we are going to have affordable apartments as they tell us, where they are going to build them but if we can give them grant money or we can give them the assistance that is where affordable housing will come in,' said Tate.
On Thursday, one message I kept hearing from people I spoke with, is the fact that there is no easy solution to solve this problem, but sessions like today hope to help make the burden for families a little easier.
