Eric McCullough spent months searching for his affordable location, but moved to an apartment with his daughter.
McCullough, 59, has disability insurance and says he can’t rent an apartment or house that he can afford to pay for.
“To me, is the magical question that people consider to be affordable?” he asked. “Who’s making these affordable homes?
Nearly 900,000 Floridians suffer from the same problem, and many spend too much on rent. That is, a recent report from the University of Florida’s Singburg Housing Research Center shows that over 30% of your monthly income is spent on housing expenses. And the latest research shows that the number of affordable units in central Florida is declining despite extensive efforts from the public and non-profit sectors.
Paying rent is planned to limit what you can spend on food, healthcare and other billing and foil planning, and save on the down payment of your home, the Centre said.
Florida’s “cost-bearing” tenants include 123,738 people from Lake, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, making up about 30% of all tenants in the area.
Florida has been involved in the construction boom in 2023 alone, adding more than 138,000 new single family homes and more than 50,500 new apartments to the state’s home inventory, but that didn’t help many low-income residents, the center said.
The median wage in the Orlando Metro area is $45,000, and home-earning residents should pay about $1,100 a month for the home, but fewer rentals available for that price.
For example, Orange County has added over 77,000 rental units over the past decade, which cost more than $1,200 a month. The number of lesser apartments rented has fallen nearly 32,000, she said.
“Even with an increase in overall supply, stocks for more affordable homes have declined,” Ray said.
For example, an apartment called The Cannery, part of Orlando’s new packaging district development that opened in 2022, and a studio and two-bedroom unit available for $1,870 will be advertised for around $2,400.
The Central Florida job market includes many positions in tourism, hospitality and foodservice, often low wages.
“We have a lot of people who work full-time in jobs that don’t pay enough to afford what’s on the market,” Ray said.
The rising costs of detached houses also affect renters. “People who may have bought a house before are renting and competing with people who may be a little down on the income scale,” she said.
Home prices in central Florida hit record highs in 2024, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. The median home sales price for the area was $380,000 in December, up 3.5% from the previous year. This data included sales of single-family homes as well as condos, duplexes and townhouses in Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Borussia counties.
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Funded primarily by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Agency, the Orlando Housing Administration provides housing assistance to around 4,600 low-income individuals.
However, inflation surpasses HUD’s 2.5% annual cost-of-living adjustments, said Vivian Bryant, president of the local agency, making it difficult to support everyone in need of housing assistance.
“The gap between available resources and growing needs continues to grow,” she said.
Germaine Shonora, an Orlando resident who grew up in central Florida, has seen both population and cost increase over the years.
His apartment near the intersection of Holden Avenue and the South Orange Blossom Trail recently raised rents, but Shonora said it would be difficult to find another location.
“Where I live, a bedroom averages $1,500, but it’s not big enough,” he said. “If you look at a lot of new places, they have a waiting list. They have affordable apartments open, but people are waiting for months to come in from time to time.”
McCullough, who currently lives with his daughter, said he doesn’t believe in complaints about the lack of affordable housing. Until the outages occurred, they began searching and discovered that many online ads for affordable apartments had omitted hundreds of dollars to keep him from moving.
In one example, McCullough said online apartment ads targeting disability insurance Orlando residents are registered on the website for $440 a month. However, when he toured the apartment, McCullough said he was told that the cheapest units were $1,000 a month, not including the required security deposits.
Other places he searched were out of reach.
“I tell them I’m on the bond. I get a certain amount each month. I’m disabled and I’m elderly,” he said.
Bryant said the area needs to find ways to increase the number of homes residents can afford. Construction experts say rising property insurance costs in Florida contribute to affordable housing problems.
“We are caught up in a difficult position where the resources needed to build affordable housing are simply not enough, but demand continues to skyrocket,” Bryant said. “Without a significant investment in housing solutions, the affordability crisis in Central Florida will only get deeper and many families will have a hard time finding a place to call home.”
