And yet if the Sunshine State is a larger-than-life reflection of where the country is heading, then the nation is still stuck, scared and uncertain of how far it wants to stray from the status quo. My travels through Florida make clear that ”” despite the urge to see recovery in improved housing sales ”” the costs of recent real estate mistakes continue to be severe. Change was often discussed during the 2008 election and after the financial meltdown, but Florida these days often resembles the character played by its native son Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”: a broken-down piece of meat, damaged and sincere, but a little too messed up to drop familiar habits.
Real estate and fast money, after all, have defined this peninsula since the ’20s, when empty lots of swamp could be flipped for a profit between martinis. Florida has generally relied far more on growth than its counterparts: in 2004 and 2005, housing construction’s share of the state economy was close to twice the national average, according to the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Florida.
Weaknesses in the approach emerged quietly, even before the bust, as overdevelopment and rising costs started pushing people away. Some were “halfbacks” ”” retirees originally from the North who ventured “halfway back” to Georgia or the Carolinas ”” but young families fled, too. In 2005, Broward County lost 1,756 students, in a district that thought nothing of adding 10,969 in 2001. Since 2004, enough parents have left to shrink the student body by 6 percent.
well one small good thing is that pressure will be taken off of wildlife with less people encroaching onto their territory…
Wow, number 1, if you had any idea how bad things are in Florida, you would never make such a statement.
Since the spate of hurricanes in 2004 and recent economic bust, people are not moving in and others are moving out. As the tax base depended on expansion and property values, both have either ended or gone into serious decline. The result is that poverty is more the norm than ever. For the truly wealthy, nothing has changed. For those who were able to make ends meet but that is all, some are now homeless. At our Mission Church of 100 members in SW Florida, we have undeveloped land surrounding us. There are homeless people living on these properties and one reason is the local sheriff does not run them out. The second is that once a week they come for a bag of groceries, health department, clinic, free meal, parish nurse, and free clothing from our thrift store.
When I came 10 years ago, we gave out about 40 to 50 bags of groceries…now it is well over 200 a week.
We receive no support from any other EC in the Deanery nor the Diocese…and we are only a mission church. The people we serve our truly the outcast, the poor and poorly educated…and they are struggling to survive.
This is the state of matters of Florida and it is not getting better. Frankly, recovery has not even begun in Florida. While I do care about our environment and the creatures that need it to survive, I place human needs above theirs and always will.
This is not funny nor something to be flippant about. The suffering is real and we can only do the bare minimum but we will do what we can.
But these people need more than a little food they need Christ in the worse way and that is the real challenge that I an our lay leadership are facing….for without Christ nothing changes.
Florida is in worse shape then most people realize. Since SW Florida is depended on people moving in for jobs and to retire, without it the state, counties, and cities are near bankrupt.
It is more than serious…education, health and many serious areas of life are at risk…and our politicians have no answer and neither does our Federal Government.
But we are a small Church overwhelmed with the tremendous needs of so many. We know that what we do we do in Christ’s name. Yet, we also know it is like putting a band aid on a hemorrhaging wound and can not stem the tide. Yet, in Christ’s name we must try and do what we can.
It is never enough and we will continue to serve Christ and those in need as long as we can…but we are simply one among so much need and it sees to be getting worse and not better.
And yet from 2000-2008 Pasco County in SW Florida has seen its number of jobs grow by 50%. What is the secret to their success? Next door in Polk County, the Polk Community College was transformed into Polk State College, in July 2009. Polk has the headquarters and manufacturing facilities for Publix grocery stores. They also have Advance Auto, and the SE United States headquarters for GEICO, among many other businesses.
I hope that SW Florida being knocked to the mat is yesterday’s story and that a solid recovery will be tomorow’s.
By the way, All Saints Episcopal in Lakeland does a great job ministering to homeless people, providing them not only with food and clothes, but also an outdoor Sunday worship service. At least they did when I last visited two years ago, and I think they had the vision to continue it into even harder times. Lakeland has always attracted the homeless as a warm and relatively kind place for them to winter over or even live all year around. I am glad that Fr. Al and Fr. Reid at All Saints preach the Gospel to them and help them in kind ways. Talbot House in Lakeland also provides food and aid to the homeless, and is assisted by many churches. The homeless were there in the best of times and they will continue to be there when times get good again.
The 2009 Hurricane Season is not over yet, and we DON’T mean the Carolina hockey team or the rugby team from New Zealand. (The NHL Season starts in October.) No, there are still tropical storms forming, and one of the few active systems is Hurricane Erika, or Tropical Storm Erika. Hurricane Erika is currently sulking about the southern Caribbean, close to the Leeward Islands, part of the Lesser Antilles chain. It’s just off the coast of Venezuela, and some of the islands in its path include Aruba and Margarita Island, an interesting island on which it’s curiously hard to find salt. Hopefully, Hurricane Erika will die off before making landfall or head farther out to sea – as it takes more than [url=http://personalmoneystore.com/Payday-Loans/no-Fax-Payday-Loans/]payday loan[/url] to clean up hurricane damage.