MIAMI (WSVN) – Are South Floridians being priced out of house and home? More people are sharing stories of their living nightmare, and their accounts of ramped-up rents and monstrous mortgages are the focus of a 7News poll.
It’s a familiar refrain in South Florida.
“It’s getting more expensive every day,” said a resident.
“it’s quite expensive, I would say,” said a resident.
“it’s definitely exorbitant. Definitely a change from where I moved from,” said a resident.
What is driving that dismal view is the cost of housing, from rents to insurance rates.
“Every income level saying the same thing. Overwhelming numbers saying it’s not manageable to live in the City of Miami,” said David Paleologos, the director of Suffolk University Political Research Center.
According to a new WSVN-TV/Suffolk University poll of Miami residents, 75% of those that were surveyed think the cost of living in Florida is not manageable.
“I was expecting a number like maybe 50%, which is a big number, too. But 76% and across all demographics? That was pretty powerful,” Paleologos said. “Less than one in four say that it’s manageable? I mean, those aren’t sustainable numbers in the long run.”
Of the 500 Miami residents that were asked, 40% said they are considering getting a second job to help with their mortgage or rent.
“It sucks. It’s overrated right now,” said Marcos Robles, a Miami resident.
Robles, a married father of three, told 7News he took a day off from work to try to find a better paying job to pay the rent.
“Water, rent, light, freakin’ — I got three kids — school stuff, food. It’s crazy, man,” he said. “You gotta do stuff nowadays that you don’t want to do, to try to make it.”
7News’ poll also showed 36% of Miami residents said they’re considering moving out of the Sunshine State because of high costs of home ownership and rentals, 34% said they were planning on doing the same because of rising home insurance prices, and 25% said they are considering selling their home for the same reason.
Just last week, Miami-Dade County received a nearly $40 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to build affordable housing in the Overtown community.
“We have been on top of this housing crisis since 2022 when I declared an emergency, and we have put in the dollars to have 32,000 new units in the pipeline, affordable and workforce, many of them already online,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. “We prevented 27,000 evictions thanks to federal dollars.”
Even still, 7News’ data showed higher costs are making Miami unaffordable for many.
Only 54% of people said Miami was an excellent or good place to live, while 45% called it was fair or poor.
“I think people outside of Florida and outside of Miami really have a different understanding of how bad it is to make ends meet,” Paleologos said.
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