Editorial: Easy to find excuses not to address housing concerns

It’s easy to come up with reasons not to address the need for lower-cost workforce and senior housing in the greater Naples area.

The few large tracts available will be near an existing neighborhood, likely with pricier homes, so it will make some current homeowners unhappy.

Factoring in the high cost of land, the types of housing needed for working folks and seniors will require more intensive development, meaning more units per acre. With more dwellings and people, traffic will increase.

The city of Naples and North Naples west of Interstate 75 are substantially built out, leaving the concentration of additional housing development in East Naples or east of Collier Boulevard.

So, yes, we can easily come up with reasons for Collier County commissioners to not continue moving forward on the community housing plan that’s been crafted during the past year.

Instead of reasons not to move ahead, however, what’s needed is the resolve to keep going forward. That’s why it was disappointing the commission couldn’t muster the resolve needed when recently asked to move forward on a logical next step in bringing that housing plan to fruition.

There were dozens of recommendations that emerged in creating the community housing plan — ways to keep high housing costs from hampering businesses, public service agencies and the school district. Employers have clearly articulated their difficulties in recruiting and retaining workers who can’t find decent enough homes or apartments that are affordable in Collier.

Among a handful of the most promising solutions to emerge was identifying surplus county government-owned land that could be provided to a developer, thus reducing costs and enabling the construction of more affordable dwellings.

Unnecessary delay

For nearly a year, there’s been a continuously public process to take what could be the first most visible successful step in using vacant county lands to create better workforce and senior housing opportunities.

The process started nearly a year ago with a list of 30 potential properties ranging from 3 to 121 acres. It was analyzed and refined at many public meetings over months to get down to two primary targets.

One is a 5-acre tract off Santa Barbara Boulevard considered for a similar project in 2006 before the Great Recession. It’s near an Emergency Medical Services station site and Calusa Park Elementary.

The other is a 60-acre tract near Manatee Middle and Elementary schools; the site was acquired by county government in 1973. If money ever becomes available, it could host a park in addition to what East Naples now has: Sugden Regional Park, East Naples Community Park, Eagle Lakes Community Park and smaller neighborhood parks.

Atop the county’s current park-related priorities, however, are a planned new sports complex off Collier Boulevard and the long-promised Big Corkscrew park near Golden Gate Estates that could be advanced if a proposed local-option 1-cent sales tax referendum passes.

When concerns arose March 13 about the compatibility of the Manatee site with a nearby subdivision, a commission majority stalled. That was unfortunate after all this time and public vetting.

County staff was simply asking commissioners March 13 for permission to continue discussions with 10 nonprofits or companies that had expressed an interest in developing on the two county-owned sites.

This isn’t close to a final decision. It was just to find out more about what the 10 had in mind. Absent such discussions, how will county leadership know how much of that 60 acres might be desired for residences versus preserved for a park?

Another reason for delay. What was needed instead was the resolve to keep moving forward.