Red California? Housing woes squeeze Florida’s middle class.

Six years ago, Jennifer Taylor counted herself among some 800 people a day moving into a state long considered “California on the cheap”: shorts weather in February, a decent house for not that much money, and low taxes.

Taxes are still low, and she can get her shorts out at least once a week after Groundhog Day. But in December, her rent rose by 20%, “from three figures into four figures.” And Ms. Taylor, a veterinary tech, says her middle-class dreams are fading as household costs – including the roof over her head – are rising faster than her income. 

“I’m looking back and starting to wonder, why did we leave again?” she says. “Are we really better off?”

Not too long ago, a $26,000-a-year income used to guarantee middle-class status here. From Fluffy Landing to Possum Bluff, Florida was “a hopey-dreamy state,” as Sarah Palin once called it. But as Ms. Taylor and millions of other middle-class sun seekers are finding: “Florida is becoming expensive,” says historian Gary Mormino. 

That’s true across the country, as housing prices, mortgage rates, and rents climb in lockstep, and available inventory reaches new lows. But the sticker shock is hitting Floridians particularly hard, and it’s coming at a time when the state is making headlines for its unexpected plunge into the kind of culture wars the Sunshine State used to avoid.

Florida’s current real estate boom cycle is a study of the intersection of middle-class aspirations and emerging values around what Americans really want – and whether they can afford it.

“People who get their money are still going to come into the state, but what does it say when you look more like California than you did Florida?” says former Florida resident Seth McKee, who now teaches political science at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

Liberal California has long been a piñata for conservatives, who see hypocrisy around bromides about diversity and inclusion clashing against an affordable housing crisis fed by NIMBY-ism.

Yet the same dynamics that have caused a crisis in California have been creeping into Florida markets. Tampa, Miami, and St. Augustine – the oldest city in the U.S. – have all seen double-digit price growth for years.

“I just don’t see it” 

But the boom in Jacksonville suggests deeper currents: Slightly dingy suburbs are suddenly hot properties for flippers, fund investors, and young families seeking increasingly in vain their own postage stamp lot in the sun.

Long considered one of the stinkiest urban areas, given now-shuttered paper mills and turpentine distillers, Jacksonville – the largest  city in the U.S. by acreage – smells a lot better these days. It’s a 30-minute drive to white beaches and lapping Atlantic waves. 

House prices and rents soared nearly 30% from 2020 to 2021 – one of the highest rates in the country. The pace is not far behind the U.S. real estate boomtown champion of Boise, Idaho.

The increases in Jacksonville have touched real lives, real fast, says Eric Hinojos, a principal at First Coast Heroes, which caters to military families relocating to work at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.  

He recounts how he recently helped a young couple sign papers on a home. But Veterans Affairs balked after it was appraised at $275,000, instead of the $290,000 listing price. The couple appealed and won.

“The military is our huge attraction,” says Mr. Hinojos. “We’ve got some growth, but we’re still just Jacksonville – it’s not San Francisco or Miami.”

Mark Wright, a retired private investigator, owns two houses that he bought at a flush moment in the late 1970s. So far, he sees taxes squeezing his fixed income as valuations rise. Yet he knows he is also sitting on a small fortune.

A few months ago, he tried unsuccessfully to buy a neighbor’s bungalow for $70,000. Last week, it sold for $200,000.

Mr. Wright shakes his head at the gap between his perception and reality. “I just don’t see it.” 

The last time Florida saw net out-migration was in the throes of the Great Recession. The state was among those hardest hit by the mortgage crash. 

The fundamentals are stronger this time around, says Ken Johnson, a real estate economist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. That homes are being valued far above where they should be given historical trends, he says, is “scary, but it’s not as bad as it was” at the height of the last boom in 2006.

But that emerging status quo is pitting a growing conservative and largely urban, white middle class against the policies and direction of Tallahassee, which is solidly in Republican hands. Housing policy, especially, is tough to implement during a boom cycle, says Mr. Johnson.

A “turnstile electorate”

The state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, hails from Jacksonville. He squeaked by a progressive Democrat named Andrew Gillum in 2018, but has since yanked the ship of state hard to the right. 

Aligning himself for a possible presidential run in 2024, he has framed the state as a vanguard in a national struggle over public health mandates, the teaching of race in school, and tax-and-spend policy. Florida is also at the center of evolving struggles of climate change, environmental degradation, and political narratives that are seeking to redefine the meaning of freedom and individualism.

One reason Mr. DeSantis’ rhetoric is playing well, says Mr. McKee, the Oklahoma State political scientist, is that Florida is bucking demographic trends seen in neighboring states. 

Georgia, for example, voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but Florida, long a swing state, is moving in a concertedly more conservative direction. Voters here gave former President Donald Trump a wider margin in 2020 than in 2016. 

And while many African Americans are retracing their families’ generational migrations back to the South, the demographics of those moving into Florida tell a different story. “That migration stream is incredibly white,” says Mr. McKee. 

That doesn’t mean an immediate reckoning on rising home prices, given what some political scientists have called the state’s unique “turnstile electorate.” 

“I don’t know what effects [rising home values] are going to have in terms of how it translates politically, in part because the electorate has such little memory,” says Mr. McKee. “I don’t think the typical Florida voter busies themselves with the politics. They got to Florida, they got the unbelievable weather that no one else in [continental] America has except California. There’s a focus on just about anything but politics. So when you have an electorate taking bits and pieces of the rhetoric, it just hasn’t hurt any of the politicians on the Republican side.” 

Shortsighted culture wars?

Danielle Bobino, who left a job to care for her kindergarten-aged son, Benjamin, has watched the changes in her home state from her cinder block rental house in Jacksonville Heights, the city’s most affordable corner.

She has a nice park with a pond around the corner, where she and her son go to play. 

But at the mall, she says she refused to sign a petition to raise the state’s minimum wage to $20 an hour. (It is currently $10.)

In her view, raising wages artificially will raise costs. Her rent is already going up this spring when she renews her yearly lease. 

But she is not sure that Republicans are paying attention to core issues, either.

In fact, as a lifelong Republican, she says, “I’m embarrassed by what I’m seeing.” To her, playing up culture war issues is shortsighted. The problems are out in the open for politicians to try to solve, she says. But instead all she hears is complaining about what’s going on elsewhere.

Her concerns point to Florida’s more existential problems, says Mr. Mormino, author of the upcoming “Dreams in the New Century: Instant Cities, Shattered Hopes and Florida’s Turning Point.” 

Constant growth, environmental degradation, and climate change are part of the state’s broader challenges. Last year, as a result of pollution, Floridians witnessed a historic mass starvation of manatees, the state animal.

Mr. Mormino counts off a list of Florida chroniclers who have decamped: Tampa Bay writer Jeff Klinkenberg now lives amid the snow-dusted peaks of Appalachia; well-known Florida columnist Howard Troxler retired to North Carolina. 

Yet Mr. Mormino has decided to stay. He is holding on to what he calls “the hope of the parent – that the future holds promise.” 

“Florida is still Florida: A trip to the Everglades or to Fort De Soto Park at sunset, it’s a remarkable place,” he says. “And did we mention there’s no state income tax?”

Ms. Taylor, meanwhile, is weighing her options. Going back home to Texas would feel like giving up. But her dream of moving to rural horse country around Ocala seems destined for trouble: Prices are going up there, too.

“Yeah, I’m very concerned about what happens to us next,” she says. “Times have gotten hard.”