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Florida Keys
Changes in Latitude
Monroe County, home to the Florida Keys, is the only county in Florida that has steadily lost population over the past five years. Is it part of the Keys' ebb and flow or something more ominous?
Indeed, many fear not a smaller population, but a homogenous group of rich retirees rather than the diverse mix of incomes and families that has defined the Keys. Monroe County Schools Superintendent Randy Acevedo says that 10 years ago, the school year began with 9,000 students; this year there are 8,000. Acevedo has to figure out how to close one of Key West's six schools. There are no longer enough children in the community to support that many.
 Hurricane Wilma was the last straw for many Keys residents. The storm marked the sixth evacuation for residents in two years. |
Most everyone agrees the primary reason families are leaving is the cost of living. Home prices along the 110-mile archipelago average $780,000, according to Coldwell Banker Schmitt Real Estate. In Key West, the average is $1 million. Buses run maids and other service workers back and forth from Florida City each day to work in Marathon, 80 miles one way, and Key West, 125 miles one way. Increasingly, police officers, managers and other professionals commute up to three hours from Miami.
While affordability defines the big picture, many residents say Hurricane Wilma was the final blow. Last October's Wilma evacuation was the sixth in two years. Locals who rode out the storm in Key West were stunned when the surge from the Category 1 hurricane flooded their island from both sides -- destroying 1,000 cars and flooding 4,000 homes, nearly a third of all homes on the island.
The storm aggravated the affordablehousing crisis because it destroyed the few low-rent trailers and apartments left, says Key West resident Joe Laino. He had retired to the Keys to live on a houseboat but in Wilma's wake returned to work as a crisis counselor for Project H.O.P.E., Helping Our People in Emergencies, a FEMA-funded project that organizes locals to help locals. Laino says some of his clients moved after landlords did not fix rentals; others left after they were unable to reopen small businesses that depend on tourism; and some "decided to move closer to family -- it took a tragedy like that to make them realize they were too far from support systems."
Keys municipalities, the county and the school board are working on programs to increase the amount of affordable housing. Meanwhile, homeowners will get a much-needed break on insurance rates. Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty rejected a proposed 25.9% rate increase by Citizens Property Insurance Corp. for Monroe County, which has the highest windstorm rates in the state. Instead, Mc- Carty ordered the state-run insurer to lower its rates in the Keys by 32.2%.
Still, another hurricane season like the last two, says Tom Tuell, editor of the Key West Citizen, and the steady trickle out of the Keys could become an exodus. A few more summers like this one -- relatively hurricane-quiet with a 10% increase in hotel occupancy in Monroe for the first half of the year compared to a year earlier -- and the Keys could draw another new crop of McMurtries.
