This op-ed was originally published in Your Observer. You can read the whole piece here.

Recently, the Florida Housing Coalition, along with the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Barancik Foundation, Patterson Foundation and the Community Foundation of Sarasota released a Sarasota Housing Action Plan diagnosing the county’s housing crisis and recommending some approaches to fixing it. 

The report provides valuable and much needed data and analysis, and we commend the partners for their foresight and commitment to producing it. 

The Housing Action Plan rightly diagnoses the symptoms of housing stress — cost burdens, displacement pressure and a growing mismatch between income levels and housing costs. But it does so while clinging to an outdated paradigm of housing policy.

Continue reading here.