For most renters in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, housing is unaffordable, but about a third of renters are struggling by spending more than half of their income on housing, research shows.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development calls them cost-burdened or severely cost-burdened.

“You've got nothing left. You are not going out to eat. You are staying home. You are probably not buying clothes. You surely are not going out for entertainment. It's a basic quality-of-life issue,” Ned Murray, associate director of Florida International University's Metropolitan Center research institute, said Thursday at a forum for public and private stakeholders.

Make Room Inc., a Maryland-based nonprofit focused on affordable housing awareness and solutions, held the forum in Miami.

Thirty-four percent of Miami-Dade renters and 30 percent in Broward County are spending more than half of their income on rent and utilities, according to the Metropolitan Center data released Thursday.

That's a significant growth from past years, Murray told the Daily Business Review.

For some who are paying less than half of their income on rent, housing still is unaffordable. Sixty-one percent of Miami-Dade renters and 58 percent in Broward are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities, the longtime gauge of affordability, the data show.

“Miami and Florida remain one of the most challenged … in the nation with respect to housing affordability,” Ali Solis, president and CEO of Make Room, told the DBR before the forum.

Florida overall is doing better than Miami-Dade and Broward counties but only slightly. In the state, 27 percent of renters are paying more than half of their income for housing, according to the Metropolitan Center report.

In Miami-Dade, rental demand from foreigners and other newcomers drives the market, Murray said. At the same time, incomes aren't growing much and in some cases are decreasing, and the top 12 occupations pay less than the area's median income, the data show.

“Nowhere else in the country is the rental market in general so externally driven. The local resident is a very little part of the market,” Murray said.

External demand is pricing out locals, many of whom have decreasing income. The median household income for the poorest 20 percent decreased nearly 19 percent from 2007 to 2016. It only increased for the richest 20 percent of households, the report found.

While there's job growth in Miami-Dade, most growth is coming for low-wage jobs like cashiers, security guards and servers that don't pay on par with the area median income, the data show.

Out of the 12 growing jobs, 11 pay less than 80 percent of the area median income, and the only job that pays at or above the area median income is registered nurse, the data show.

Solutions

Solis — who held similar forums in New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington — said there are solutions.

In Chicago, Rush University Medical Center loses staff members because of unaffordable housing, which has become a cost burden for the hospital, she said. It's considering providing rental assistance as a benefit, just as employers provide other benefits like gym discounts.

“What they are finding is many of their employees need access to short-term emergency assistance, and they are actually drawing from their retirement plans just to pay for emergencies so that they don't get evicted from their home,” Solis said.

Some solutions are coming up naturally, said Avra Jain, CEO of the Vagabond Group LLC, which has revived old motels along Biscayne Boulevard between 50th and 79th streets.

A single-mom housekeeper at one of Jain's properties often ran late because she took three buses to get to work, Jain said.

“We own an apartment nearby, and we basically started providing subsidized housing for our staff. A lot of that is not having security deposits. You don't need to pay first- and last months' rent. If we had a two-bedroom apartment, maybe encouraging two workers to do a co-living situation. There are some naturally occurring things that people create to come up with their own affordability,” Jain said.

Legislation

For years money in the state budget meant for affordable housing has been diverted to other spending.

The William E. Sadowski Affordable Housing Act passed in 1992 established a dedicated source of money for affordable housing as well as for housing for the elderly and disabled from a tax on real estate transactions. In 2001, this generated $185 million, according to the Florida Housing Finance Corp.

But since the recession, $1.3 billion has been diverted for other purposes.

Lawmakers meeting in Tallahassee are considering House Bill 191 and Senate Bill 874 which would restrict Sadowski fund spending beyond its originally intended purpose.