Many Floridians Struggle to Find Rental Units

ORLANDO, Fla. — Eric McCullough spent months looking for an affordable place of his own but then moved into an apartment with his daughter, his only option to make ends meet.

McCullough, 59, lives on disability insurance and said he could not find apartments or houses for rent that he could afford on those payments alone.

“The magic question, to me, is what do people consider affordable?” he asked. “Who do they make these affordable houses for when the people who need it most can’t afford them?”

Nearly 900,000 Floridians struggle with the same issue, and many end up spending too much on rent, meaning more than 30% of their monthly income goes to housing costs, according to a recent report from the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. And the latest studies indicate that, despite extensive efforts from the public and nonprofit sectors, the number of affordable units in Central Florida has been falling.

Paying too much in rent limits what they can spend on food, health care and other bills and foils plans to save for a down payment on a house, the center said.

Florida’s “cost-burdened” renters include 123,738 people in Lake, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties, making up about 30 percent of all renters in the region.

Florida has been in a construction boom that in 2023 alone added more than 138,000 new single family homes and more than 50,500 new apartments to the state’s housing inventory – but that has not helped many lower-income residents, the center said.

The median wage in the Orlando metro area is $45,000, and residents earning that should pay about $1,100 a month for housing, but there are fewer and fewer rentals available at that price, said Anne Ray, manager of the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse at the Shimberg Center.

Orange County, for example, added more than 77,000 rental units in the last decade that cost more than $1,200 a month. The number of apartments renting for less than that fell by nearly 32,000, she said.

“The stock of more affordable housing has gone down, even as the overall supply has gone up,” Ray said.

An apartment complex called The Cannery, part of Orlando’s new Packing District Development, opened in 2022, for example, and advertises studios available for $1, 870 and two bedroom units going for about $2,400.

Central Florida’s job market includes many positions in tourism, hospitality and food service, and they are often low paying.

“We have a lot of people who are working full-time in jobs that clearly don’t pay enough to allow you to afford what rents are on the market,” Ray said.

The rising cost of single-family homes impacts renters, too. “People who might have bought a house before are renting and competing with people who might be a little lower down on the income scale,” she said.

Housing prices in Central Florida hit a record high in 2024, according to the Orlando Regional Realtor Association. The median home sale price in the region was $380,000 in December, up 3.5 percent from a year earlier. The data included sales of single-family homes as as well as condominums, duplexes and townhouses in Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties.

The Orlando Housing Authority, mostly funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, provides housing assistance for about 4,600 low-income residents.

But inflation has outpaced HUD’s 2.5% annual cost-of-living adjustments, said Vivian Bryant, the local agency’s president, making it hard to help all those who need housing assistance.

“The gap between available resources and growing needs continues to widen,” she said, with a growing population adding to the problem.

Orlando resident Jermain Shonola, who grew up in Central Florida, has seen both the population and the costs grow over the years.

His apartment complex near the intersection of Holden Avenue and South Orange Blossom Trail recently raised the rent, but Shonola said finding another place is hard, especially as he wants a bigger space. 

“Where I live, a one-bedroom is an average of $1,500, but they’re not nearly big enough,” he said. “When you look at a lot of new places, they have waiting lists. They have affordable apartments open, but people have been waiting for months sometimes to get in.”

McCullough, who now lives with his daughter, said he didn’t believe complaints about the lack of affordable housing until he went on disability and began a search, finding out that many online advertisements for affordable apartments omitted the hundreds of dollars in fees that would keep him from moving in.

In one instance, McCullough said, an online apartment ad targeted at Orlando residents on disability insurance listed units on their website for $440 per month, a price he could afford on his $1,000 monthly disability allowance. But when he toured the apartment, McCullough said he was told the cheapest units were $1,000 a month, not including required security deposits.

Other places he searched were also out of reach.

“I would tell them that I’m on a fixed income, I get a certain amount each month, I’m disabled and I’m a senior citizen,” he said.

Bryant said the region needs to find ways to build more housing its residents can afford. Construction experts say rising property insurance costs in Florida contribute to the affordable housing problem, with some developers saying such units are not financially feasible.

“We are caught in a difficult position where the resources needed to build affordable housing simple aren’t enough, yet demand continues to surge,” Bryant said. “Without significant investment in housing solutions, Central Florida’s affordability crisis will only deepen, leaving many families struggling to find a place to call home.”

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