Local official and Okaloosa County staff previewed a housing summit and outlined a county-backed subsidy option intended to help bring more affordable homes to Okaloosa County.

Local official, a city official, said the summit will be Sept. 24 at the Niceville Community Center and framed the discussion around local workforce needs, saying, “But what I wanna talk about today, the housing situation.” Brittney, an Okaloosa County staff member, described a new-construction strategy under the SHIP program that she said the county will roll out soon and that “would allow us to provide, I want to say, maximum up to $250,000 per home, to help subsidize the cost of that build, as long as they put an income qualified home buyer in there.”

Why it matters: County staff and municipal partners described a shortage of housing that is affordable to local workers — police officers, nurses, home health aides, teachers and some military personnel — and said that without more accessible options the local workforce and operations could be affected. Officials said developer profit motives and construction costs are limiting the supply of smaller, lower-cost homes.

What county staff described
Brittney described affordability as “making sure that housing is accessible to the citizens in our community that actually live, work, and play here,” and said accessibility can mean smaller-footprint starter homes or multifamily units for retirees. She told the local official that the county is examining incentive strategies and developer fees to reduce costs for targeted housing types.

On eligibility, Brittney said the program would target buyers based on area median income, using language in the meeting that described households “who are within 80 to a 120% or a 120% or below of our area median income.” The transcript wording on the income band was not exact; the county summary staff presented in the meeting described the target as income-qualified buyers and tied subsidies to that requirement.

On incentives and limits
County staff said local incentives will be one tool and that state programs remain an important but sometimes hard-to-access source of support. Brittney said the county has supported developer applications for state tax incentives but that final award decisions are made outside the city and county.

Community land trust and prior work
Participants said last year’s housing summit led to work on a community land trust and that municipalities passed resolutions supporting the trust’s operation. Local official and county staff said the upcoming summit will include case studies and table-based problem-solving to translate ideas into locally applicable solutions.

Next steps
County staff and the local official said the Sept. 24 summit will gather housing resources from across Florida, present local housing data, and convene industry and community partners to develop practical recommendations. No formal vote or ordinance was recorded during the discussion.

For context: The meeting exchange was a planning and informational discussion; no final policy or contract award was adopted during the remarks recorded in the transcript.