Finding an affordable place to live in the Orlando metro area has become increasingly difficult for the average person, with average rent climbing over 30% in the last two years in what’s become one of the nation’s most in-demand rental markets.
Rental assistance — through the local government or the federal housing choice voucher program — has been made available for some of those in the greatest need, to help prevent families from being displaced or evicted. But new research shows that even if you receive government assistance, it’s still not enough.
Housing choice vouchers, for instance, are a federal rent subsidy intended to expand quality, affordable housing options for low-income renters and their families. But while rents have surged throughout Orlando in recent years, the value of those vouchers — as well as the average person’s income — has failed to keep up.
According to research from Zillow, there are over 12 times as many severely cost-burdened renters in the Orlando metro area (defined as spending at least half of your income on rent) as there are available vouchers through the Housing Choice Voucher program.
More commonly known as Section 8, the HCV program is the nation’s largest federal rental assistance program, which distributes vouchers to low-income renters through local agencies.
First established in the 1970s, its goal is to help low-income families find housing of their choice in the private market. The program gives recipients a voucher, or subsidy, that they can use to pay a portion of their rent anywhere in the private market, as long as it’s affordable and meets basic health and safety requirements.
Typically, families with a voucher pay approximately 30% and up to 40% of their monthly income on rent, and then the program will take care of the difference, paying that subsidy directly to the landlord or property manager. It’s reliable payment for landlords, advocates say, and tenants are already pre-screened.
Most of those voucher recipients in Orange County are working families who make at or near Florida’s minimum wage of $11 per hour (which isn’t nearly enough to afford an apartment in Orlando by yourself).
Many recipients are elderly, disabled and/or people of color who help drive Central Florida’s low-wage service and tourism economy.
There are over 12 times as many severely cost-burdened renters in the Orlando metro area as there are available housing vouchers for low-income families.
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But the value of a housing choice voucher is limited, based on a formula by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and experts say it’s not enough to help cover Orlando-area rent in today’s market.
“If you look at the pandemic, you know, Florida experienced some of the fastest increases in home values and rents in the country in the last couple of years,” Zillow senior economist Orphe Divounguy told Orlando Weekly. “And of course, that has brought housing affordability front and center for struggling families.”
One of the reasons why there are so many families with vouchers struggling to afford housing in cities like big Miami, Tampa, and Orlando — where rent growth has notably outpaced voucher value — is not only because rents have increased so much, according to Divounguy.
It’s also because HUD’s formula for coming up with the value for housing vouchers, based on what are known as “fair market rents,” uses county-level estimates for determining how fast rents are increasing.
That’s a problem, because this fails to address the huge disparities in rent growth that can occur within counties, especially those as sprawling as Orange County.
“If you’re determining the value of vouchers based on county level rents, or rents at the county level, you’re missing the fact that many ZIP codes within the counties might see rents grow at a faster pace,” said Divounguy. “And of course, that means that so many families are left behind, and have fewer housing options available to them.”
The median rent in Winter Park, for instance, is different from that in Apopka, or from rent in neighborhoods such as Metro West, Millenia or Pine Hills — a majority-Black neighborhood (infamously disparaged as “Crime Hills,” to the chagrin of residents) that has been plagued by underinvestment.
Even the federal HUD, which comes up with the voucher value formula, has acknowledged this issue, particularly in large metro areas like Orlando and Tampa where rents have soared.
Rent growth has far surpassed income growth of your average worker in recent years, and the elderly who rely on social security income, and those who rely on disability benefits to meet basic needs have been more likely to be priced out.
Searching for solutions
Within the HCV program, basing vouchers’ value on rent prices on a ZIP-code level, however, rather than by county, could help.
In 2011, for example, HUD switched the county-level fair market rent in Dallas, Texas — another major metro area — to a small area fair market rent formula based on ZIP codes as part of a legal settlement.
Voucher value rose 30% in some areas, according to Divounguy. “And that meant more housing available to low-income households,” he added.
In 2016, HUD then expanded its use of small area fair market rents to certain metro areas, but the process of expanding that elsewhere is still ongoing.
At the same time, there are other barriers to finding a place to live in Orange County with a voucher, too, beyond cost. “I think the biggest issue is the shortage of units,” Kim Boettner, program development supervisor for Orange County’s Housing Choice Voucher program, told Orlando Weekly earlier this year.
A shortage of affordable housing in the region, driven by an influx of residents during the pandemic and over the last decade, is exacerbated by landlord discrimination against people who use vouchers to help pay for it — a problem rooted in stigma that’s referred to as “source of income discrimination.”
McKenna Schueler
Screenshot of an Orange County apartment listing in December 2022 that would be prohibited in May 2023, due to the adoption of source of income protections.
To help address this issue, Orange County leaders earlier this year adopted a ‘tenant’s bill of rights’ ordinance that prohibits landlords from discriminating against renters based on where their rent money comes from, as long as it’s lawfully sourced.
It also prohibits landlords from retaliating against tenants who seek tenant services, and requires that landlords provide tenants with a notice of their rights prior to move-in.
The ordinance doesn’t limit how much a landlord can charge for rent, nor does it require that landlords necessarily lease to tenants with housing vouchers. But it does fill a gap.
Unlike other forms of discrimination, such as racial discrimination, source of income discrimination in housing isn’t prohibited by either federal or state law.
In addition to Orange County, over a dozen states (not including Florida) and over 100 cities and counties nationwide have adopted source of income anti-discrimination protections, often in response to calls from community advocates, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed by critics.
Although supporters emphasize that accepting vouchers can also benefit landlords by ensuring reliable payment, industry groups like the Florida Realtors and Apartment Association have repeatedly lobbied against such protections in various cities and counties in Florida, arguing it’d be burdensome to smaller landlords.
Unsurprisingly, the groups (affiliates of larger, even more powerful national lobbying arms) have supported state legislation that would prohibit cities and counties in Florida from establishing source of income protections.
Last week, legislation (HB 1417) to accomplish as much was approved last week largely along party lines by the state Legislature’s Republican supermajority.
Orlando Sen. Linda Stewart, a former Orange County commissioner, was the only Democrat to join Republicans in supporting the contentious bill in the state Senate.
Will Orange County’s source of income anti-discrimination protections disappear?
If signed into law, there’s concern the bill could bring Orange County back to the days, circa earlier this year, when it was perfectly legal for landlords to reject tenants based on where their rent money came from.
Orlando Weekly previously reported that the bill could wipe out the county’s ‘tenant bill of rights’ ordinance. But whether the source of income anti-discrimination protections will be wiped out with it is, at this time, unclear.
Staff attorneys for the Orange County government on Tuesday told Mayor Jerry Demings during a board of county commissioners meeting that they don’t believe HB 1417 would affect the county’s source of income protections, because staff baked those into the county’s human rights ordinance, which is governed by a different section of state law.
“Residential landlord tenancies are governed by chapter 83. Fair Housing is governed by chapter 760,” said assistant attorney Dylan Schott. “So I don’t see that preemption affecting our ability to regulate fair housing.”
Alana Greer, director and co-founder of the Miami-based Community Justice Project, a legal nonprofit that has been following the legislation, confirmed to Orlando Weekly that they believe that interpretation from the county is correct.
But the full list of ordinances across Florida that would be affected by the bill has yet to be fully disclosed or released to the public.
“I don’t think it would apply,” said Schlott. “But it is a question.”
A comprehensive approach toward addressing unaffordable housing
Experts acknowledge, however, that in addition to protections against discrimination, a variety of short-term and long-term solutions will be needed to help address the broader issue of unaffordable housing not just for low-income families, but for middle-income earners who are also feeling the squeeze.
Cracking down on price-gouging and profiteering by corporate developers who’ve bought up housing stock in Florida, for instance, are ambitious goals.
But other initiatives pursued by some local and state leaders across the country include efforts to increase the affordable housing supply, adopt zoning reform, invest in community land trusts and increase funding for the HCV program, which currently serves only one in four households across the U.S. that are eligible for it.
On the housing shortage side, Florida legislators have claimed help is on the way.
A bill signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last month, dubbed the “Live Local Act,” ostensibly aims to spur more affordable housing development by throwing tax incentives at private developers to build more than just a new slew of luxury condos for the rich.
But some Orange County leaders have expressed concern that Live Local Act, also supported by industry groups, won’t actually do enough to help those who are very low-income, because the income thresholds developers are required to build at least some of their housing for are too high.
The same bill also banned all Florida cities and counties from enacting any form of rent control, although that hasn’t stopped Republicans from bringing it up as justification to gut tenant protections enacted by local policymakers across Florida.
As it is, homelessness in Central Florida has jumped over the past year, and at least 16,000 evictions were filed in Orange County in 2022 alone — the most since at least 2009, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
The opportunity to apply for (let alone secure) a voucher through the HCV program only comes up every few years, and housing agencies limit the number of applications they accept.
Waiting lists, made up of applications selected through a lottery system, can run up into the thousands, and they can take years to exhaust.
It’s a process that even those who work within agencies that distribute housing vouchers become frustrated with, because they see for themselves, day after day, what the stakes are for people who are on the streets, or one step closer to being there.
Nancy Sharifi, assistant manager of Orange County’s housing division, told Orlando Weekly in January, “We need to come to our senses and realize that everyone should have access to housing that they can afford.”