Walton County’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) met for its regular meeting on July 18. Melanie Rowland-Mills approached the committee to discuss a list of housing incentives. Rowland-Mills began by explaining that 11 housing incentives need to be discussed, with the committee having discussed several of them already this year. So, Committee member Dr. Carolyn Zonia presented information on property tax discounts and affordability.
Zonia’s presentation began with information from the Florida Apartment Association discussing specific strategies that can share costs of creating affordable housing. Some of these strategies include donation of county owned land, waiving of filing fees, and property tax discounts. The presentation then moved on to discussing soft and hard costs, hard costs pertaining to construction and labor costs, while soft costs pertain to fees that have to be filed such as environmental studies or architectural fees.
