Housing

Assorted Key West living spaces:

 All absurdly expensive, of course.

 A small modern apartment far from Duval might be had for less than $300,000.

 Characteristic Conch Cottages go for between $750,000 and whatever absurd sum you may care to be bold enough to ask for.

Stock Island trailers now under threat as development moves to the working class island next to Key West:

 Public housing in New Town Key West, with long waiting lists to get a unit:

By contrast Old Town Key West and the classic lines of Conch Cottages, some equipped with modern solar collectors:

There was a huge debate  about adding solar to historic homes in the historic neighborhood. They are even reluctant to allow hurricane resistant windows as they are not of the right character for a 19th century neighborhood.

 Like the Vatican, Key West moves at a  snail's pace when it comes to innovation.

Cheap Housing

A funny thing happened last week in the Lower Keys. The county planning commission, the people who advise the county commission the lawmakers that is, voted down a proposal to build affordable housing. You'd think it was a bad thing. Actually no, it  was in aggregate a good vote much to my surprise.

The plan was to put 160 units of housing on Summerland Key on apiece of land they call the Shrimp Farm just off Highway One. It's not a terrible spot you'd think,vacant and cleared of the old business, but for some reason the owner who also owns hotels in Key West decided he wanted to go all out and build 160 units of "affordable" living.

Of course no one really knows what "affordable" means to a multi millionaire developer...and wages aren't that great in the hospitality trade in Key West as a general rule, so the idea of creating houses for sale at prices workers could pay seems unlikely at best, maybe naive or maybe a confidence trick at worst. The planning commission wasn't buying. 

The neighbors were none too excited though that's to be expected as the general rule of thumb now is Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (BANANA) an acronym that supersedes NIMBY (Not In MY Back Yard). In this case I think they had a point as  an extra 160 families ona small handkerchief of land on a small island is going to create traffic and congestion issues worse than they already are. On top of that there is no clarity as to price and true affordability. So all the neighbors can see is more transient housing, more second homes mixed in with rentals and no affordability.

I was surprised by the negative vote but these developers don't give up and I'm sure there will be a less dense proposal soon with a clearer mixture of amrket rate (second homes) with a sop to affordability and eventually it will be approved in some form. Developers start out asking for the stars and the moon and whne you say no they then ask for the moon, you figure it's a huge victory you can exploit at the next election and tons more houses go up.

Unfortunately in these small islands we are running out of room and I don't mean that metaphorically. Now that Spring Break is over and the winter residents are gone we can all notice we have breathing room at the supermarket, lines on the highway are down. But the lines to get into Key West on the highway were extraordinary, and evertyone noticed and everyone grumbled.   It's true there is a lot more commuting going up and down between Big PIne and Key West as fewer workers can afford to live in Key West. But the additonal traffic from visitors and winter residents doesn't help. And the fact that lines have eased up now they are gone proves the point.

The hotels have been mumbling informally that visitor numbers are down. Online booking services say Trump's America is unappealing to Europeans at the moment. Perhaps Key West will get a respite from the hordes this year, perhaps not. Perhaps if the city does there could some rethinking about the lack of a plan or a vision for the future of this remarkable city set amongst these remarkable islands.

Mastic Mobile Home Park

I don't know much about the history of Mastic Mobile Home Park on United Street but it is still going strong, a bastion of affordable housing in Old Town.

I am not sure where it got it's name but I suppose it is named for the mastic tree which I couldn't identify for you if one fell on me.

Seen from the Louisa Street side the life lived inside the park tends to spill out as projects gain a life of their own:

I believe there are close to 30 spaces in the park which as you can see is home to actual travel trailers rather than the usual selection of manufactured homes more or less on wheels.

I checked out Mindy Conn's school board race which is non partisan ostensibly and her list of endorsements includes the pricy end at Ocean Reef, the gated community at the north end of the county, as well as my own local of the Teamsters Union. So I guess I'm supposed to vote for her...I have some research to do I guess before November.

I wonder how long this corner of Key West will last. Simonton Court got wrecked by a mad desire to build expensive homes on land where trailers used to be.

I wonder how long before Mastic goes the same way. I remember Jabours Trailer Park next to Schooner Wharf where the Marker resort is today. They must have been sold around 2004 or 05 if I remember correctly and who remembers that low cost neighborhood almost on the waterfront?

Next to the trailers cleaned up and expensive little Conch cottages are sitting, almost as though waiting for the trailers to be gentrified out of the neighborhood.

Cheap Housing, Tall Housing

There is one intractable problem among the many issues facing Key West that brings up heated debate all by itself. You'd think it would be the inevitable rising of the seas that will drown the lives of the children of the current leadership. City Commissioner Sam Kauffman posts pictures of his adorable family on Facebook enjoying the middle class American Dream with zero interest in the melting ice cap just up the coast. But he did lead a vote on affordable housing. Apres nous, le deluge...

His plan, to serious nods of approval among the commissioners is supposed to be the start of a program to take the affordable housing crisis "seriously," which is odd as every city commission in living memory has made the same promise. This time the city will dedicate all 91 building permit allocations to affordable housing. So there. Except of course they won't if, as the financial wizards tell us in their advertising, past performance is actually any indicator of future actions. In Key West money talks and grand gestures are no match.

Affordable housing is a euphemism for feel good policy making in the least affordable city in Florida. Developers build market rate homes on the graves of affordable trailer parks and apartment complexes. Section Eight housing died under the past thirty years of free market, bootstrap lawmaking and was never replaced, and free market economics conveniently put the playing field on a kilter from which the middle class keeps sliding off. The statistics are out there but facts mean nothing when feelings and beliefs unsupported, govern public policy and trendy catch phrases replace policy discussion. Affordable housing in Key West means multiple jobs, roommates and deteriorating housing stock. It's not easy to maintain homes for rent in a city that breeds resentment at both ends of the rental agreement: renters don't give a damn, and landlords burn out trying to keep places looking nice. Insurance costs rise and take rents sky high with them. Insurance goes up because the statistics make it clear, beliefs notwithstanding, that we face climate Armageddon in these islands and it's only a matter of time.

Yet into the midst of this festering problem the city commission tries to wade from time to time. Elections spur their concentration for a few months and then when it becomes clear the problem is as intractable as ever it gets shuffled away and replaced by something equally mystifying, like how to solve the parking crisis in a tiny city devoted to massive car ownership. My preference for living 23 miles outside Key West is based in common sense, an easy commute and a desire for quiet neighbors. Even though as you can see here Key West is very quaint.

Key West suffers from an intense contradiction that is built into the 21st century city. On the one hand it sells itself as a pirate haven, home to the dropped out rebels and pirates from Up North, people you should fly down to visit in their natural habitat as through they are creatures in a zoo. However these reprobates and inebriated are finding it harder and harder to fake an existence in the other Key West, the one that is hell bent on maximizing profit and sending a message to people with vast wealth that the weather is lovely, the city is quaint and the restaurants are world class. And you just can't combine the pirate message with the well heeled appeal in one small town. It isn't working and the well heeled naturally are winning.

The other bar to affordable housing is the politics of the town. Key West is no longer on the cutting edge of society. If you are gay you can stay home pretty much these days. Or go live in a more affordable and more avant garde city than Key West which is as unaffordable to young gays as much as to young straights. Rent control, a dubious proposition at best, is nowhere in sight, and there is a vocal group in town who shout free market every time affordable housing comes up. It's inevitable as a side product of the gentrification created by a second home economy which is gaining the upper hand. Key West will never even remotely imagine a future with a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage, anymore than it can imagine a vehicle- free Duval Street. Banning plastic bags? Creating bicycle routes and one way streets? Solar power? Even allowing white roofs was an undertaking.

So now the city commission wants to increase the height limits of new construction as a way to improve the affordable housing situation. I kid you not. That is the answer to the shortage of worker accommodation. When city commissioner Margaret Romero voiced her opinion that this was a maneuver to benefit developers she got slapped down by the manly Jimmy Weekly who labeled her a conspiracy theorist thus damning her to eternal outsider-hood on the commission. Except I fear Romero may be right. Which is odd as she is a former corporate executive and devoted to the free market thing so you'd imagine clear thinking would approve of increasing the skyscraper count on this little sliver of land.

But clear thinking and rational solutions are nowhere in sight. It's time Key West came clean. No one gives a damn about affordable housing. Hotels are building employee housing into their structures, and as unpleasant as indentured servitude sounds there is an unending supply of foreign "students" ready to dig in for a year or two and go home with a supply of dollars to give themselves a leg up in Latvia or Poland or Croatia or somewhere Slavic. They may be wetbacks but they are the modern breed, young, thin, white and blonde so it's okay.

Stock Island will be gentrified soon enough and the trailers filled with Cubans and Haitians will be gone. Commuting from as far as Big Pine will be the norm and life will go on. It will look different but we humans are adaptable and living up the Keys will be seen as the thing and my eccentrically long commute will become the norm. As for rising seas I figure if a city commissioner with small children isn't worried, child-free me has nothing to concern him. The water's warm, the dog is happy and my pension is building. Let the shenanigans continue, island style.

 

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Housing: Affordable And Not

Clearly I am getting to feel better as I have started to take a fresh interest in the pages of the daily paper, and I am well enough nowadays to stagger downstairs to pick up the neatly folded newsprint tossed in my driveway. Oh dear what do we find? More stories about the abominable state of housing in the Southernmost City. And judging by a couple of stories on the front page tonight's city commission meeting could make things, at best, no better, and  at worst, no worse. 

The first chunk of housing involves a development on Caroline Street with expensive town homes under construction (see above from the front page of yesterday's paper). The question there is whether or not the homes should be permitted to rent for less than 28 days at a time. The city limits short term rentals, the idea being to preserve residential neighborhoods rather than turning them all into party central for a week at a  time...However in neither case are these multi million dollar homes going to be rented as workforce housing, it seems to me. The question is more one of helping to encourage sales to people who one day might like to live in Key West  but want to buy these town homes to use as rentals in the meantime which does the housing market no particular good. This issue highlights the difficulty of home ownership in Key West that is often masked by ridiculous prices combined with lack of amenity. You buy a home and end up with your neighbors being vacationers up till all hours splashing in the pool, playing music and being rowdy after a night's drinking on Duval Yay! That's what Key West is all about! When you've paid through the nose for your home this sort of behavior can render you pretty testy

The other housing development planned for the city is a collection of ten manufactured homes to be built on stilts on Flagler Avenue at 11th Street on a piece of land essentially cleared by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Apparently one city commissioner of glorious but short memory wanted a city park but developers have been arguing over the parcel and now it seems these manufactured homes will sell for $800,000 apiece with a chunk of the land remaining undeveloped and "preserved." These three bedroom wonders don't exactly qualify as worker housing either at those prices. The best part is the city gets a whole $15,000 tribute for affordable housing funding from each home. As you might imagine around here  $150,000 won't go far to assuage the need for affordable homes. The best part about this development for me is the security wall and electronic fence that is planned to keep the ravening hordes of homeless at bay. The Catholic Soup Kitchen is next door...The Enclave will be a secure fortress, safe from the poor.

If there were any doubts about Key West's commitment to affordable housing, let them be dispelled at once. Even in my feverish state this appears just to be more lopsided fuzzy thinking from a leadership class that has not one spark of thoughtful creativity.