City of Fort Myers wants to buy vacant lots to build affordable homes

Building homes for people who are the backbone of the community is what Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson says the city plans to do for teachers and first responders.

The plan is in the early stages, but the idea is to break into the housing market and bring more affordable places to the area.

The pros of the plan are that it creates more inventory in the housing market and gives people a decent place to live. It’s a home that people could have where they could still afford to furnish it.

The downside is that there is a risk that comes along with buying any property. The same goes for building it, but in this case, a real estate expert says the reward might just be greater than the risk for the city.

It’s the American dream. A family, a white picket fence, and a house to call home, but now only two of those things are attainable.

“We keep seeing, and the common theme that I hear every day is people cannot find places to live, they can’t find rental properties, they can’t find affordable housing to buy,” said Joshua Rudnick, a real estate attorney. “In my law firm, finding new attorneys coming out of law school… they can’t afford to live in Lee and Collier County.”

You don’t need a law degree to know that buying a house is something fewer and fewer people can do. Rudnick says the problem isn’t going anywhere, either.

“It’s a crisis that is impacting our entire community,” Rudnick said. “It’s going to trickle down and get worse and worse as property values keep going up.”

Mayor Anderson knows it, too, and he wants to do something about it.

“What we’re gonna look at is the city building a house and selling it for cost,” Anderson said. “If we could put up, you know, a couple, three, four, maybe half a dozen homes a year, that’s… adding to the housing inventory, making homes available for the category of workforce essential.”

Anderson said there are about half a dozen lots, possibly more, that are vacant in Fort Myers. With a little help from the city, that empty land could meet a major demand.

“And yet keep the cost down to where people in that workforce essential category… our nurses, our police officers, our prosecutors, teachers, and people in that earnings category who earn too much to really get assistance, but they don’t learn enough to buy a decent house,” said Anderson.

This concept is still in the very early stages, but the mayor said they could be looking at as many as 50 properties to create homes for folks who are the backbone of our community.

What happens with the city getting into residential real estate? Rudnick says the pros outweigh the cons, though Fort Myers needs to consider the risks being taken on as a property owner.

“I think that there’s a huge benefit, a huge upside to this, and a huge need; so, the risk can be mitigated,” Rudnick said. “I think everyone has to look at what is the benefit, and like anything, is the benefit far outweighed by the risk?”

“The goal is to keep your housing costs at no more than 30% of your income,” Anderson said. “We want you to be able to go out to dinner, go out to the movies, shop, maybe buy a new car, because that helps the economy in general.”