Delray Beach Voters Overwhelmingly Support Affordable Housing
Last week the Delray Beach City Commission voted down a proposal to have city staff review an affordable housing proposal targeting individuals making $35K or less. This was an especially bitter pill to swallow since we know that Delray voters support this proposal. Here's the proof.
We used nationally recognized polling vendor American Pulse who fielded 315 Complete surveys via phone and online. To qualify for the survey a respondent had to have voted in at least one election in the last four years. About 80% of the 47,000 registered voters qualified for this survey ("Active Voters"). We made sure that at least 25% of the respondents had voted in at least one municipal election during that time.
We asked high propensity voters about their level of support for affordable housing in Delray Beach.
The answer?
WE NEED MORE.
Take a look at the topline results and our interpretation of them.
Delray Beach Voters overwhelmingly support efforts to increase affordable housing for low-income people in our community. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fair Rent for a studio apartment is $1,800. This is hardly affordable to a low-wage service worker making $15-20 per hour.
One issue that was recently presented and rejected by the Delray Beach City Commission is a concept to address affordable housing for low-income individuals. Prior to the proposal to City Commission, we wanted to gauge the support for the concept (called Multi-Tenant Housing Units) with Delray Voters.
To understand how much public education played into the level of support we split the sample into two groups: half the sample received only Limited Information of the concept, while the other half received a much larger set of information (Fuller Information). The hypothesis is that providing more information to voters about MTHU's will increase their support.
Sample 1 - 50% of Sample (Limited Information)
MTHU's stands for Multi-Tenant Housing Units
They are like traditional rooming houses where every four residents share a private bathroom and kitchen.
Each MTHU goes for $600 per month.
Sample 2 - Remaining 50% of Sample (Fuller Information)
MTHU's stands for Multi-Tenant Housing Units
They are like traditional rooming houses where every four residents share a private bathroom and kitchen.
Each MTHU goes for $600 per month compared to the average studio apartment of $1,400.
MTHU's were recently approved city-wide in Toronto, Ontario Canada.
Multi-Tenant Housing Units do not require any tax breaks or subsidies.
MTHU's include advanced security systems and rigorous background checks for prospective tenants.
MTHU's have existed in Delray Beach since 1960, and there have been not instances of crime in these units in the past five years since the implementation of stringent tenant vetting.
The responses from Delray Voters shows that when they are given more information about MTHU's they are strongly in favor of the concept by a 3:1 margin (70% Support vs. 23% oppose). Most notably, the Strong Opposition dropped by almost 50% (32% down to 17%) with Fuller Information.
Understandably, low-income housing has a lot of baggage, and that was seen with the Limited information sample. On balance these respondents Opposed the idea (42% Support vs. 49% Oppose), and the Strong Opposition outnumbered Strong Support by 2:1 (32% vs. 16%). This concept has a long, long way to go before it could ever become a reality in Delray Beach, but when properly informed about MTHU's, voters support them in large numbers.
In Summary
Affordable housing for low-income people has big support from Delray Beach voters, and the MTHU option received strong support once people were fully informed about the idea. Unfortunately, voter support wasn’t enough Delray Beach City Commission, and the affordable housing proposal was rejected. The need to inform the public about affordable housing options is why we exist!