Hurricane Ian worsens Florida’s housing crisis

Before Hurricane Ian caused billions of dollars in damage in Florida, Alaura Miller considered herself a part of the lower middle class.

Now, she says, she’s among the poor.

The mobile home Miller rented for $1,000 a month and shared with her 23-year-old son in the inland community of Arcadia was so severely damaged it will have to be demolished.

“We really don’t know what direction we’re going — whether we go out of state or stay,” she said, adding that without rental assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency she will be forced to move to Texas to live with one of her daughters.

Miller, 60, a retired barber, is among Floridians on low or fixed incomes struggling to find affordable housing in one of the nation’s most popular and expensive states to live.

“Florida came into this hurricane season already having a shortage of affordable housing, particularly for people who are working in service jobs and other lower wage jobs,” said Anne Ray, a researcher at the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies.

“And so, people who have lost their homes are going to be competing with the people who are already trying to find affordable housing. It’s a tough, tough situation.”

Housing costs have climbed in recent years for renters and homeowners, Ray said.

“There have been really high accelerating rents in Florida, particularly over the past year,” she said. “And wages haven’t kept pace. So, the overall trend is this growing gap between what housing costs and what people can afford to pay based on their wages.”

Miller was able to obtain a generator Tuesday and plans to stay in the back of her mobile home, which she said sustained less damage than the front of the house, until her landlord demolishes it.

“The kitchen and the two bedrooms are intact, but we’re not going to be able to stay here long because he’s [the landlord] going to have to demolish it,” she said.

Miller said that between her meager savings and the money her son earns as a Winn-Dixie supermarket employee, the two can’t afford a more costly rental. Arcadia is in one of the state’s poorest counties.

People who are displaced from Arcadia would have a difficult time finding something similar elsewhere in the state, Ray said. The median sale price for a single-family home in Arcadia was $138,500 in the first half of 2021, compared to…