Bur$atil has been posting alot about the housing bubble. It’s BAD down here. I live right down the road from the hospital they are speaking about in this article. There’s more brand new EMPTY houses than you can count. Since I’ve been here I can’t tell you how many people in the neighborhood have lost their homes already. They pre-purchased, moved in when the homes were built, the taxes and insurance went through the roof….. they can’t re-mortgage……and BAM……they’re out on the street. The shame of this is……they are going to build MORE housing units for employees, when there’s already soooooo many here, but that workers can’t afford. And my question is, why in God’s name do the developers keep building unaffordable housing? Who do they think is going to move in? Why not build moderate priced housing so people can actually afford to live here? Doesn’t make sense to me.

MIAMI — As chief executive of South Florida’s largest health organization, Brian Keeley never dreamed he’d be contemplating fabric swatches and paint samples. Then again, he never thought he’d be jumping into the housing business.

But faced with the prospect of opening a sixth hospital without the 800 employees needed to staff it, Baptist Health South Florida plans to build and/or buy affordable rental housing to attract nurses and other workers.

“No deposits. No owner leases. Just move right in. We’ll even decorate it for you,” Keeley said. “The sole condition is you have to work for us.”

Baptist Health is not alone. Miami-Dade’s second-largest employer, the University of Miami, and the much tinier Keys Federal Credit Union have plunged into the housing market, signaling the emergence of a trend that, experts say, will spread across the state.

“Employer-assisted housing is the new buzz, the coming thing,” said Jaimie Ross, president of the Florida Housing Coalition. “South Florida will see it first because that’s where housing prices are highest, but it will work its way up.”

In January, the statewide median price of a single-family home slipped by 2 percent over the previous year to $239,300, but, according to a 2005 census estimate, the median household income in Florida hovers near $42,000. That’s a ratio of nearly 6-to-1.

Nowhere is the mismatch greater than in South Florida, where the median price of a single-family house averages more than $380,000. That’s seven times higher than the median household income in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and eight times more than in Miami-Dade, according to Ned Murray, an urban planner at the Metropolitan Center of Florida International University.

“Before the market exploded in 2004, the ratio between home value and median household income was about 4-to-1, a gap that could reasonably be filled by various government programs,” Murray said. “But when we get to a 7-to-1 or 8-to-1 ratio, all government programs fail. I think that’s bringing employers to the forefront.”

Doing the math — and listening to departing staffers — is what brought Keeley to the same conclusion.

Baptist’s chief executive said many employees, giddy over escalating home values but fed up with rising property taxes and homeowners insurance, are cashing in on their houses and moving to the “new Florida” — the Carolinas, Tennessee and Georgia.

Full article at the Sun Sentinel

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