Miami is taking on debt to build more affordable housing

There is undoubtedly a housing crunch across the U.S.—and one of the places where it’s particularly difficult to find an affordable home is Miami. The locality posted the nation’s largest annual price gains at nearly 11% as of November 2023, according to CoreLogic. Meanwhile, Miami-Dade county is short more than 90,000 affordable housing units, a University of Florida housing analysis shows.

“The housing crisis still reaches too many,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in her state of the county address in late January. In reaction to the housing crisis in the county, Cava plans to propose a $2.5 billion property tax-backed debt package, she said, $800 million of which will go directly toward affordable housing. Voters will decide on the bond proposal in November.

Building more affordable housing has been one of Cava’s major areas of focus during her tenure. She was elected in November 2020, before the housing market took a turn for the worse—at least for buyers fighting 8% mortgage rates, sky-high home prices, and abysmal inventory levels. In April 2022, she declared an affordability crisis

So far, Cava’s administration has sponsored a first-time homebuyer program that provides below-market loan rates, renovated three public housing developments, and plans to start developing more low-income housing with $40 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

“We’re on our way, but we’re not done,” Cava said in her January address. “We won’t stop until everyone is safely housed because housing is a human right.” Cava’s office did not respond to interview requests from Fortune regarding the bond proposal.

Why has Miami gotten so unaffordable?

The average home in Miami costs more than $522,000, Zillow data shows, which is about 56% more expensive than a median-priced home in the U.S., according to the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index. Prices continue to rise in this area, “simply because of demand,” Erin Sykes, chief economist at residential real estate brokerage firm Nest Seekers International, tells Fortune. 

“Miami has positioned itself as an alternative to NYC, San Francisco, LA, and Chicago—and offers significant opportunity in the finance, real estate, and media industries,” Sykes says. “The attractiveness of having no state income tax, a healthy, outdoor lifestyle, and a government supportive of business adds to its lure.”

Its appeal extends beyond young professionals and baby boomers who flock to Florida during retirement. Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made the move to Miami recently, which could save him $600 million in taxes. Other billionaires including Carl Icahn, chairman of conglomerate holding company Icahn Industries and Citadel CEO Ken Griffin also moved their respective companies to Miami following their own relocations. 

“These three men exemplify the ongoing corporate wave coming to Miami,” according to South Florida luxury real estate firm ISG World’s Q4 2023 report. “Since 2020, nearly 180 companies  have either expanded or opened main or regional headquarters to South Florida.” Griffin has even said he believes Miami could surpass New York as the second financial capital in the world, behind London. 

But “many of the same reasons that have led to the region’s success have downsides as limited space to develop clash with a growing population,” Nick Luettke, Moody’s Analytics associate economist, tells Fortune. “Miami is another case of America’s ‘missing middle’ as incomes and housing costs continue to become more bifurcated. Miami possesses significant labor populations on both ends of the wage spectrum leading to challenging housing affordability dynamics.”

So many people want to move to Miami, in fact, that the metro area experienced the largest inbound gains across the country in 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors. Inbound moves increased by nearly 60% between 2019 and 2022. But home building hasn’t kept pace with migration trends, experts say.

“It’s no secret that there has been a massive wealth migration into Florida, particularly Miami,” Sykes says. “We see dozens of luxury buildings going up all over the city, however, the workforce needed to support this new influx of residents has nowhere to live.”

Other cities taking on debt to build more housing

Miami-Dade is just the latest in a string of municipalities taking on debt to build more affordable housing—and many are practically forced to, since construction companies can’t keep up with housing demand across the U.S. Not only do more affordable housing units need to be built, but housing policy experts also argue that existing privately owned affordable housing units need to be preserved for the long term.

Other cities have introduced bond-backed affordable housing projects recently. New York City sold $700 million of social bonds in 2023 to help pay for more affordable housing, while vacation towns including Telluride, Colo.; Nantucket, Mass., and other Cape Cod towns have also borrowed millions of dollars for workforce housing. 

While some may assume that $800 million will cover—or even completely fix—Miami’s affordable housing problem, it’s something that will “need to be a continued line item” in the locality’s budget, Sykes says. 

“Cost of development is extremely high because land is so limited,” Cava told Bloomberg. “$800 million will go very fast.”

The $800 million figure, if it passes, “is impressive relative to the size of the metro,” Luettke says. But, “forecasting the success of affordable housing projects is challenging. Building more housing is one of the best ways to tackle the rising cost of housing, and the more direct incentives to build that exist the better.”