Perhaps the largest social-justice group in Palm Beach County is calling for action on affordable housing as the state barrels towards the midterm elections.
PEACE — short for People Engaged in Active Community Efforts — is a coalition of 31 religious congregations who have been working since 1991 to tackle social community issues.
The group will host a community forum in West Palm Beach on Oct. 26 at which it will ask candidates for the Palm Beach County Commission in the Nov. 3 election three questions on where they stand on the issue.
Organizers will also ask candidates about Amendment 3, the statewide ballot question that would cut property taxes and that has become a hot topic this election season.
Affordable housing struggles worsened after 2020 pandemic
Palm Beach County has become a more expensive
place to live during the past 30 years and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
In 2022 alone, there were just 188,000 homes valued at less than $400,000 in the county, a loss of nearly 50,000 affordable homes from the previous year, said a study done by Florida International University’s Jorge M. Perez Metropolitan Center.
That same year, more than 235,000 homes were valued at more than $400,000, an increase of 54,000, according to the 20-page study undertaken for the county by FIU.
Monthly rental pricing of $2,000 or less also experienced a significant decrease. The study showed only 111,000 units under $2,000 were available in 2022, a decrease of more than 19,000 units.
The issue of housing many people, and yet the public in general still holds misperceptions about who the affordable housing shortage affects and what it truly means, said Paige Shortsleeves, PEACE’s lead organizer.
"I think there's been this shame, right? Of who is the homeless, who are the people impacted and there's so many people who have like this picture of what that looks like," Shortsleeves said.
"It's not necessarily the person on the street that you think of in your brain. It is the person sitting in a pew next to you that you never knew," she continued. "It is our teachers, it's the public workers, it's all of the folks who we rely on every single day."
Harry Wolis spoke to how this issue has personally affected him and his family at a news conference PEACE staged at St. Ann Catholic Church in West Palm Beach on Oct. 12. He said he and his family "have done everything right."
"My wife and I are retired, we are on a fixed income, but our fixed income is fine for us. ... The challenge is that our daughter works as a waitress here in the community she works hard," Wolis said.
He said that his daughter is doing everything he and his wife taught her to do to set herself up for success: "get a job, work hard, help support your family, and it just doesn't work given the price of housing."
Wolis said if it wasn't for him and his wife stepping in to help his daughter, she could have been homeless.
"A community cannot thrive and grow if people who make up the community and built this community cannot afford to live here," said Mami Kisner, first lady of Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in West Palm Beach, one of the congregations involved in PEACE.
While those who qualify as low income are still in need of housing, many who identify as middle class are struggling with the issue in different ways: from rising homeowners association fees, rising assessment fees and the price of apartments sitting just outside the range of many working people’s income.
Affordable housing forum at 7 p.m. Oct. 26 in West Palm Beach
PEACE is waiting to see how the county, and the state at large, votes on the proposed Amendment 3. The amendment would expand homestead tax exemptions, reduce the growth in some property tax assessments and place new restrictions on how some property tax revenues may be spent.
If passed, however, the amendment could reduce revenues that support local services by millions of dollars per year and limit the budget flexibility local governments traditionally exercise under Florida's home-rule system. That could potentially limit local programs to develop affordable housing.
In the meantime, PEACE will conduct its forum at 7 p.m. Oct. 26 at St. Juliana Catholic Church, on Dixie Highway near Southern Boulevard in West Palm Beach.
The coalition has invited county commission candidates to speak and has commitments from Sara Baxter and Katherine Waldron, the two candidates in District 6 in the western communities, as well as Erica Whitfield, who won election in August to the District 2 central county seat.
Arianna Otero covers breaking news and residential real estate for The Palm Beach Post. Contact her via email at AOtero@pbpost.com and follow her on X: @ari_v_otero.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PEACE coalition pushes Palm Beach County candidates on housing crisis
