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Priced out of Keys
workers come by bus - lack of affordable homes spreading statewide, groups warn
Maya Bell | Sentinel Staff Writer
MARATHON -- The sun isn't even a hint in the sky when the bus leaves south Miami-Dade County and rumbles 80 miles down the Overseas Highway jammed with one of the scarcest resources in the Florida Keys: workers.
Maids, nursing ades, landscapers, cooks and security guards fill every seat, and the aisle, too, with some riding more than two hours to jobs that pay more than similar ones on the mainland.
"You got to do what you got to do," says Florida City resident Jerry Thomas, 53, about his nearly five-hour round trip to a Marathon lawn company.
The fleet of private buses that ferry hundreds of bottom-rung wage-earners such as Thomas up and down the Keys every day is the most visible sign of the affordable-housing crisis threatening the economic viability and social fabric of Monroe County.
Harder to see is the flow of teachers, paramedics, cops, bank tellers, managers and other moderate and even upper-income professionals who are heading north for good.
Many are cashing in on homes bought long ago, often leaving behind empty jobs.
The reason? They can't afford to stay in Monroe County, and their would-be replacements can't afford to move there. Not when the average sale price of a single-family home in the Keys was $960,096 last year -- up from $368,048 in 2001, according to Coldwell Banker Schmitt Real Estate.
"Last week, the cheapest house in the lower Keys was a 1960s-era trailer with two bedrooms and one bath for $359,000," said Ed Swift, part owner of the Conch Train, a tourist trolley in Key West. "So what we're saying to the cop who is married to a teacher is, 'Leave, because this is the best you're ever going to do.' "
Lest other Floridians think the problem is peculiar to the Keys, Swift and other advocates of work-force housing warn, they should think again. Monroe County, they say, is a harbinger of a trend now spreading across Florida: The need for affordable housing is no longer confined to unskilled, low-wage earners.
As pricey condos, gated communities and mega-mansions take over the rest of the Florida coast and other desirable inland enclaves, public-safety and other lower- or middle-income workers are being pushed out of the housing market and farther from their jobs, threatening to leave other communities without as well.
"There was a time when people could say, 'Oh that's just the Keys,' but it's not just the Keys anymore," said Jaimie Ross, president of the Florida Housing Coalition. "We're seeing hyperinflation in property values across the state, so it's affecting police officers, nurses, teachers and other low-paid professionals in a lot of places."
Last year, the median sale price of an existing single-family home in Florida rocketed to $235,100, an 86 percent jump over the previous four years.
'Nowhere to go'
For now, though, few places face tougher challenges than Monroe County. After all, the county's fragile island chain is a series of geographically isolated resort towns. And the Keys' limited supply of vacant land is subject to some of the toughest growth-management restrictions in the nation.
Designated by the state as an "area of critical state concern" in 1974, the county is limited to just a few hundred new building permits a year, and they are awarded like prizes in a high-stakes bidding contest.
Prospective home builders who can afford, for example, to buy an extra lot to donate to the county can move to the head of the permit line. The result, critics say, is only the wealthy can afford to buy in the Keys.
The rental market is no better. Apartments and hotels are being converted into pricey condos. So, too, are old Key West conch cottages. The starting price for a refurbished one bedroom: $569,000.
'It's a changed place'
Mobile-home parks also are disappearing. Nearly 70 families who live at the Jolly Roger Travel Park in Marathon recently received eviction notices from the owner, who announced plans to change the use of his waterfront property.
If he does, the local Home Depot, the hospital, the post office, a bank and several restaurants likely will lose employees who have rented lots at the park for years. "We want to stay, but there's nowhere to go," said Renee Violette, 36, who owns a boat-trailer shop with her husband.
Others lucky enough to buy when housing was cheaper are cashing out, enticed by the quality of life upstate.
After 15 years in Key West, Brian Haff, operations manager for the city's ambulance service, cleared $500,000 when he sold his 1,700-square-foot Keys home. He used the profit to pay off his mortgage and buy two homes in Hernando County. All for cash.
"I have no regrets," Haff said. "I don't like what's happened to the Keys. It's not for families anymore. It's a changed place."
The changes ripple everywhere: The public schools are losing 500 students a year, and, despite the highest salaries in the state, turnover among teachers is at record levels. As a result, the School Board is reluctantly contemplating getting into the housing business.
At the county jail, a handful of corrections officers sleep in cots after their 12-hour shifts, avoiding the three-hour commute to their homes in Miami-Dade County.
The Key West Fire Department just launched a fire academy at the local high school, hoping teenagers who undergo training and earn their emergency medical certification will join the department after graduation.
The presumption is the recruits will continue living with their parents but, Fire Chief Billy Wardlow acknowledges, staying in the Keys may not be an option when they start having families of their own.
It wasn't an option for Danny Barrios, 30, a father of three who grew up in Key West and enjoyed serving his hometown Fire Department. But fed up with the growing pressures of life in the Keys, he moved his family to Central Florida in 2003, joining Walt Disney World's Fire Department.
"It got crazy down there," Barrios said. "We were paying over $3,000 a month for our mortgage, and I was working three jobs. Up here, I got a bigger house, a lot cheaper mortgage and more free time."
Lending workers to Keys
As for Monroe County's private sector, it's spending more time just trying to recruit and keep workers.
Publix pays the travel expenses and hotel bills for employees from markets as far north as Vero Beach who lend themselves to stores in Marathon or Key West for a week.
The Keys Federal Credit Union is acquiring its own employee housing, and the electric cooperative has established a down-payment, mortgage and rental-assistance program.
Other Keys businesses rely on the JGT commuter buses, which are subsidized by Miami-Dade, to deliver workers, who in turn call the service a "blessing."
A laundry worker at an Islamorada resort, Ammie Smith, 59, is as thankful for her bus ride, which costs $1.85 each way, as she is for the higher wages she earns in the Keys. Never mind that she arrives at 4 a.m. to ensure a seat on the 5:40 a.m. to Marathon.
"Oh, it'd be a lot easier to live there," she said, "but nobody can live down there anymore."