Sunbelt Blues
Mar. 2nd, 2023 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI recently read Andrew Ross's 2021 book Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing. It's not a long book, but it still took me more than two months to finish. There's nothing wrong with the writing; it's just depressing.
Sunbelt Blues focuses on the housing crisis in Osceola County, Florida, which is contiguous to Disney World. Essentially, most of the available housing in Osceola County is targeted at wealthy retirees or managed by corporations specializing in vacation home rentals. Meanwhile, a sizeable percentage of the county's population makes between $20k and $35k a year, which means that they don't qualify for welfare but can't afford a giant house or a luxury apartment. Since the out-of-state real estate and equity firms that have invested in the area wouldn't profit from more modest development projects, there's almost no affordable housing for any of the service workers employed by Disney or any of the other parks and resorts in the area.
This artificial housing shortage has unfortunately created a situation in which a bunch of borderline middle-class people are living in hotels or permanently camping out in the woods.
You'd think Osceola County would be wealthy enough to help these people out, but Disney has occupied its own self-governing "improvement district" since 1968 and doesn't pay taxes, apparently. This district is supposed to be dissolved this coming summer, but there's a lot of political controversy surrounding why this happened and what it means. My general impression is that Republican politicians want control over the area for reasons that are less than altruistic.
Anyway, the main thing I took away from Sunbelt Blues is that apparently the Mormons bought up a bunch of wildlife preserves, which they plan to use as a biological ark in the event of an apocalypse. As a result, the Church of Latter-day Saints is the largest landowner in Florida. True story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches
Sunbelt Blues focuses on the housing crisis in Osceola County, Florida, which is contiguous to Disney World. Essentially, most of the available housing in Osceola County is targeted at wealthy retirees or managed by corporations specializing in vacation home rentals. Meanwhile, a sizeable percentage of the county's population makes between $20k and $35k a year, which means that they don't qualify for welfare but can't afford a giant house or a luxury apartment. Since the out-of-state real estate and equity firms that have invested in the area wouldn't profit from more modest development projects, there's almost no affordable housing for any of the service workers employed by Disney or any of the other parks and resorts in the area.
This artificial housing shortage has unfortunately created a situation in which a bunch of borderline middle-class people are living in hotels or permanently camping out in the woods.
You'd think Osceola County would be wealthy enough to help these people out, but Disney has occupied its own self-governing "improvement district" since 1968 and doesn't pay taxes, apparently. This district is supposed to be dissolved this coming summer, but there's a lot of political controversy surrounding why this happened and what it means. My general impression is that Republican politicians want control over the area for reasons that are less than altruistic.
Anyway, the main thing I took away from Sunbelt Blues is that apparently the Mormons bought up a bunch of wildlife preserves, which they plan to use as a biological ark in the event of an apocalypse. As a result, the Church of Latter-day Saints is the largest landowner in Florida. True story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches
