NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. – The average home in Nassau County now costs nearly $500,000, according to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, a price tag that’s pushing many working families out of reach of homeownership and even stable rentals.
One longtime resident, who asked us not to use her last name, knows that struggle all too well.
Lisa, who’s lived in Nassau County for more than 30 years, recently found herself experiencing homelessness after selling her home during the height of the housing boom.
“They keep building and building and they’re building $400,000, $500,000 houses,” she said. “It’s not helping the single parents or even the elderly or the up-and-coming newlyweds. It’s not helping any of us.”
Lisa said she assumed finding a new place to rent would be simple. But what she discovered was a rental market that had become unaffordable overnight.
“The amount that they wanted for the deposit for the rent was just above what I was making,” she said. “I couldn’t do it at all.”
Her story is one that the Nassau County nonprofit Affordable Housing 1st hears almost every day.
When Lisa reached out for help, donations helped pay for a hotel room for her and her grandchildren until the group could find them a more affordable rental home.
“The whole burden of finding a place was gone,” Lisa said. “My grandchildren and I were able to go to work, go to school, come home, cook dinner, in our own home, our own bedrooms, our own place.”
Affordable Housing 1st was created last year by co-founder Carlene McDuffie and president Kevin Harriman to address Nassau County’s growing affordability crisis.
The group has since purchased two properties in Yulee, where it plans to build hundreds of homes designed for working families earning less than 80% of the area’s median income.
“We’re not building housing for the homeless. We’re building housing for the houseless,” McDuffie said. “We have a huge population of people who just don’t have houses to live in. What I see is families living here — some elderly, some working class, a combination of families and a community. I see a dream.”
The nonprofit has raised $1.9 million so far to acquire 14 acres of land along Pages Dairy Road, but McDuffie and Harriman say more community support is needed to complete the project.
“The hard part that people always point to is, ‘Well, we need to acquire the land,’” Harriman said. “We’ve done that. But we need more contributions from the community.”
For McDuffie, the mission is personal and deeply rewarding.
“It tugs at my heart to know we’re changing people’s lives,” she said. “If you change one person’s life in your lifetime, you’ve created a miracle.”
To learn more about Affordable Housing 1st and how you can support their mission, visit their website.