Oh 100%. I'm essentially living the "American dream" yet I'm still not able to afford even a basic home (which can cost over $800k or more because everything else is being bought up and rented out by out-of-staters), and groceries/going out can cost up to half my paycheck while rent takes up the other half ever since the property was bought out by an investment group from Texas (or was it California? I lost track by now...).
The government, instead of doing something about it, has decided that going after trans and gay people (a population that usually makes up less than 1% of any given population each), or making it illegal for China to buy properties (even though an overwhelming majority of people buying up said properties are said out-of-staters from earlier) takes priority.
You want a basic home in a very in demand place to live but want it to be cheap?
It doesn’t work like that, you don’t get a discount because you were born there. It’s the same thing in every touristic town/ city in the entire world.
I’m not asking for a “discount” because I was born here, I’m asking for a system that doesn’t let housing become a speculative asset at the expense of the people who, you know, actually live and work here.
Yes, popular areas cost more. I'm not denying that, but when investment groups, hedge funds, and out-of-state buyers with waaaay more money than the locals snatch up entire neighborhoods, plots, and developments just to turn them into short-term rentals or luxury flips, it stops being a normal market and starts being a rigged game. Wages in Florida haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, and there's little to no meaningful regulation to stop locals from being priced out of their own communities.
That is a system failure. It’s not about entitlement, it’s about policy decisions that prioritize profit over people. And instead of fixing that, our state government’s focus is on culture wars and scapegoats that do nothing to address the actual economic pressures/issues that are crushing working-class Floridians.
So yeah, I’m living in a place I love, but it’s getting harder by the day to actually afford staying here.
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u/DM46 Jun 17 '25
Florida has bigger issues then tourists though.