Housing Affordability & the Cost of Living: The Math, and the Plan

The problem, in numbers

Start with the price of a home. In March 2026, the median single-family home in Palm Beach County sold for $645,000 — up 3.2% in a year, with inventory down at least 14% (Miami Realtors, via WLRN). The median condo or townhouse sold for $330,000, up 6.5%.

Now put that next to what District 90 families actually earn: a median household income of $76,862 (U.S. Census ACS 2024 5-year). Do the division:

> $645,000 ÷ $76,862 ≈ 8.4. The county's median single-family home costs about 8.4 times our district's median household income. The traditional benchmark for "affordable" is roughly 3 to 4 times income. Even the median condo, at $330,000, runs about 4.3 times.

One note, because this campaign labels its numbers: that $645,000 is the county median sale price — what homes actually traded for in a month. The district's median home value of $370,400 (ACS, owners' self-reported values across all owner-occupied homes, including older condos) is a different, lower statistic. Both are real. The sale price is what you face if you're trying to buy today.

Renters aren't spared. The average rent in Boynton Beach hit $2,390 a month in August 2026, up 3.1% in a year (RentCafe/Yardi Matrix). West Palm Beach is $2,477. Statewide, Florida's median rent climbed roughly $500 a month between 2019 and 2023 — from $1,238 to $1,719 — even as more than 240,000 new apartments came online. About 905,000 low-income Florida renter households are cost-burdened, the state is short 640,741 affordable and available units for renters below 60% of area median income, and 79% of Florida's renter households include at least one working adult (University of Florida Shimberg Center, 2025 Rental Market Study). This is not a problem of people who won't work. It's a problem of math that doesn't work.

Why it's happening

Three forces stack on top of each other here, and each one has a number attached.

Carrying costs: insurance. The latest Florida Office of Insurance Regulation data (January 2026 Property Insurance Stability Report, as summarized by Worth Insurance) put Palm Beach County's average home-insurance premium at $6,412 — second-highest among Florida's counties, behind only Monroe (the Keys), and far above the statewide average of about $3,757. The July 2026 Stability Report brings it down again, to $6,323. The good news: that is a real trend, $6,614 in January 2025 to $6,412 in January 2026 to $6,323 in July 2026, and the reforms are measurably working — Citizens rates are falling a statewide average of 8.7% for 2026, including an average 11.9% cut for about 26,000 Palm Beach County homes, with 17 new insurers entering since the litigation reforms (Governor's office, 2026). The data says the fix works. It also says the job isn't finished.

Carrying costs: property taxes. Palm Beach County property-tax collections reached $6.5 billion for the fiscal year that began October 1, 2025 — up $457 million in a single year. The county's taxable value is up 63% since 2020, and in setting FY2026 rates, just 2 of the county's 37 municipalities — Palm Springs and South Palm Beach — proposed rates below the rolled-back rate; the other 35, plus the county, the school district, and the special taxing districts, all proposed tax increases, on average about 7% above rollback (WLRN, Sept. 9, 2025). Rising values became rising bills, almost everywhere.

The condo squeeze. This district's coast — Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Ocean Ridge — is full of condo buildings from the 1970s and '80s, exactly the buildings covered by the post-Surfside milestone-inspection and structural-reserve (SIRS) requirements that came due at the end of 2025 and into 2026. In older buildings, special assessments are running from tens of thousands of dollars to well over six figures per unit, monthly fees have doubled or tripled in some buildings, and non-compliant buildings can lose access to conventional financing (2026 industry analysis, OLT). For a retiree on a fixed income — and our district's median age is 47.1, older than Florida and the nation — that's not an inconvenience. It's an eviction notice written by accountants.

What a state representative can actually do

The Florida House is where these levers live. Here's the plan I'd carry to Tallahassee — each item tied to the numbers above.

1. Keep driving insurance costs down. The reforms that attacked litigation costs are working — $6,614 to $6,412 to $6,323, Citizens down 11.9% for 26,000 county homes, and new carriers competing again (17 had entered by January 2026; the July 2026 Stability Report counts 21). I'll file and back legislation that keeps tightening the cost drivers and brings more carriers in, until our county stops being near the top of the national charts.

2. Deliver real property-tax relief. The Save Our Homes amendment — raising the homestead exemption to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028 — is on your November 3 ballot. I'm voting yes, and the Legislature writes the implementing law. I'm asking for a seat in the majority that writes it, so the relief arrives without gutting local services.

3. Fix the fix for condo owners. In 2025, the Legislature passed HB 913, which gave real relief: it raised the reserve-item threshold from $10,000 to $25,000, allowed associations to fund reserves through loans, permitted a two-budget pause in reserve contributions after a milestone inspection, exempted small buildings from SIRS, and required records posted online (Florida House bill records). That's a start. I'll work on the next round — implementation oversight, financing tools, and protections so safety requirements don't force seniors out of paid-off homes.

4. Back sensible supply. The Shimberg data is blunt: Florida is 640,741 affordable units short for its lowest-income renters, and building more than 240,000 apartments didn't stop rents from rising nearly $500 a month. I'll support letting the market build attainable homes — without bulldozing the neighborhoods people moved here for.

The contrast — and the ask

Here's the record, plainly. The 2025 county data shows how rare relief is here: 35 of the county's 37 municipalities — plus the county, the school district, and the special districts — proposed rates above rollback. And in Tallahassee the arithmetic is just as stark. Our current representative, elected in the December 9, 2025 special election, serves in a chamber where Republicans hold 83 of the House's 120 seats to Democrats' 34, with three seats vacant (official House member roster, August 2026). In the 2026 session he was first-named sponsor on seven bills. One became law — CS/HB 851, professional learning for instructional and school administrative personnel, which passed the House 108-0 and the Senate 38-0 and was approved by the Governor on May 22, 2026 as Chapter 2026-109. The other six — HB 853, 855, 907, 957, 1193 and 1447 — died in their first committee of referral on March 13, 2026, with no committee vote recorded at all. That's not an insult; it's arithmetic. Good intentions in the minority don't lower your insurance bill.

I'm an engineer. I've spent twenty years defining problems, measuring them, and shipping fixes. Every number on this page is sourced below — check my math, and if I'm wrong, tell me with a source and I'll fix it. Then, this November, send someone to Tallahassee who sits in the room where the budget is written, and who treats your cost of living as the problem to solve.