Credit: Photo via City of Orlando/Facebook

While Orlando has in the past been crowned a leading foodie destination and LGBTQ-friendly city, it appears the City Beautiful can also not escape its designation as one of the most cost-burdened metro regions in the United States, where a majority of its renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

According to a recent report from Apartment List analyzing U.S. Census data, the number of cost-burdened renter households is at a record high, with the Orlando metro ranking No. 4 nationwide, closely trailing Florida’s Tampa, Miami and Cape Coral regions.

Sixty-one percent of Orlando metro renters reported spending more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent, according to the most recent Census survey, and 28 percent pay more than half. The Orlando metro region is made up of the cities of Orlando, Kissimmee, Sanford and other municipalities in-between.

A September report from the U.S. Census stated that nearly half of U.S. renters are cost-burdened, a term frequently defined as spending more than 30 percent of one’s monthly income on rent, mortgage payments and other housing expenses.

But Orlando’s never been average. And while rent prices have stabilized some compared to major price hikes felt by residents in 2021 and 2022, many working adults — and adults on fixed incomes — are still playing catch up from those hikes. Others remain at risk of being priced-out.

A point-in-time count conducted earlier this year, for instance, revealed an alarming trend in the number of older adults aged 65 and older in the region without shelter, according to the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, a HUD-supported nonprofit that facilitated the count. “For many people who live on Social Security or pensions, the cost of housing, food and medical care is simply outpacing their most cost-of-living increases,” Martha Are, the nonprofit’s CEO, shared in a statement earlier this year.

An estimated 61 percent of Orlando metro renters spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent, while 28 percent pay more than half.

According to the nonprofit’s findings, just over half of the 191 homeless older adults they identified in the region on a single day this January lacked any form of habitable shelter.

Altogether, a majority of people without shelter that they encountered reported living on the streets or sidewalks — now banned under Florida law — or in the woods or other outdoor encampments. At night, dozens of people rest in sleeping bags, wheelchairs, or sit slumped against concrete walls under the overpass in Orlando’s downtown core, as the last sight drivers see before jumping on Interstate-4.

Average rent for just a one-bedroom in Orlando is up more than 30 percent since 2019, while the median household income is $77,378, up from $61,876 in 2019 — a roughly 20 percent increase . Even for those looking to buy, research from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies indicates that home prices as of last year still far outpace residents’ incomes.

In 2023, the median home price in the Orlando region was 5.7 times the area’s median income, researchers found. Even still, the Orlando area has become a popular relocation destination, at least for the higher-income earners who can afford to move to the area — and, for some, even buy up homes in all-cash to boot.

Leaders in Orange County for their part — where the majority of the region’s homeless shelter space is located — approved a local ordinance to place on the ballot during the 2022 midterms to temporarily prevent landlords from hiking up rent more than 9.8 percent for just one year. The measure, meant to be an emergency stopgap, was popular among locals, securing 59 percent of the vote.

It was a victory for housing advocates that came despite a well-funded opposition campaign from real estate industry groups like the Apartment and Realtors Associations, which went on to successfully lobby the Florida Legislature to ban rent control measures statewide the following year. The local rent control measure in Orange County never took effect due to a legal challenge eventually abandoned by the Florida Supreme Court.

Many housing experts have pointed to a shortage in affordable housing supply to explain why housing costs have spiked so high, with the Orlando metro region containing just 88 affordable and available housing units for every 100 area median-income renter households as of 2022. For low-income earners, prospects are even worse, with the region suffering a deficit of 94,715 affordable and available housing units for low-income renter households.

Both Orlando and Orange County have invested funds in initiatives to address housing supply shortages (by, for instance, incentivizing developers to build housing low-wage workers can afford), as well as employment assistance programs, and other projects to address other risk factors for homelessness, such as substance use disorder.

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This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2024.

General news reporter for Orlando Weekly, with a focus on state and local government and workers' rights. You can find her bylines in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, In These Times, and Facing South.