“The problem of prosperity”

Build It

Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Palm Beach County and other similarly blessed places around the nation are suffering from what some have called “the problem of prosperity.”

Put another way, it’s also been called “last one in close the door.”

OK. Fine. Palm Beach County is a great place to live.

But the folks who do something other than clip coupons, or who are otherwise not saddled with work, per se, can no longer afford to live here. The problem is, and with meteoric rises in both land and home costs, there is virtually no place left for those who must actually work for a living, to in fact live.

Teachers, fire fighters policeman and health care workers are among many others who are finding it less and less attractive to live and work in Palm Beach County because it, quite simply, is not affordable --- and those people are leaving the county in significant numbers.

How significant?

In Florida as a whole the net migration continues to be positive - with about 1,900 people a day moving in, and about 970 a day moving out. And that's right through the end of 2006, and despite the harrowing 2004-05 hurricane season.

However, it’s only necessary to point at one number to know the depth of the problem in South Florida. For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, Palm Beach County saw a decline in school enrollment in 2006.

There are in fact real estate companies on Florida’s west coast that deal specifically and only with people trying to escape South Florida.

The principle culprit is the lack of affordable - so-called “workforce housing.”

Workforce housing, indeed, affordable housing of any kind is no longer merely a rhetorical question. If such housing is not provided, and provided both systematically and in large quantities in the next 20 years, then Palm Beach County is going to suffer lower and lower quality public and private services, because less and less qualified people will be willing to undergo long, daily commutes.

This is not about the public housing of old --- the “projects” that were doomed to fail because what collectivized housing accomplished was only a gathering together of large groups of people with the same need --- jobs and, absent jobs, then more tax dollars.

The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Deveopment (HUD) foisted the muiti-billion dollar boondoggle of public housing upon us when the strength of this nation was always finding the best and the brightest among us to fulfill our needs through rewards of the free enterprise system.

One of the ways to do that is through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, and a variety of other groups who understand that we need to create the pride and pleasure of affordable single-family home availability.

Habitat and groups like it need financial help. However, the state is already collecting billions in money supposedly designed to fund affordable housing but these monies (document stamp taxes) are being shuffled into the general fund, even while affordable housing budgets are being cut.

These monies need to be used for the intended legislative purpose. Build affordable housing, and quality public and private employees will come, and will stay.

Boca Raton’s long-range plan of inter-modal transportation providing greater incentive for workforce housing west of the city remains an attractive idea - but one that doesn’t seem to have major political weight behind it - yet.

That, and other approaches to workforce housing need to be realistically and seriously examined

Doing anything else is pennywise and pound foolish.

Sid’s Right

Leave it to County GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein. Just when you think you have him pegged as a hidebound, died in the wool denouncers of all thing Democratic, he goes and commits a rationality.

Asked by this newspaper what he thought of Senator Bill Nelson’s (that’s large D, Democrat Senator Bill Nelson’s) ideas about election primary reform, Dinerstein said, “Clearly the Senator is on to something.”

Here’s Nelson’s plan: six presidential primary dates, one in March, two in April, two in May and one in June. Each contest would feature at least one state from each of six different geographic regions. The order of states within each region would rotate every four years.

“This would give voters in larger states a strong voice in selecting the nominees over four months, while also giving citizens in the smaller states a fair say, too,” said Nelson.

“And if we accept the fact that the primary system is both broken and fluid, then the Nelson proposal is a change for the better and ought to be looked at,” Dinerstein said.

Question now is: will Boca Raton Republican Club President Yvonne Boice now allow Sid back into those gatherings?

Of course she will -- because the system is broken, and Sid’s right.