By Theresa Carli Pontieri
In Palm Coast and Flagler County, the housing squeeze is real. Retirees on fixed incomes, young workers, and service employees are being priced out by rapid growth, scarce rental inventory, and rising costs. Median home prices hover around $352,000, rents around $1,650, and many households can realistically afford only $700–$900 a month without falling behind. Yet instead of using a target approach unique to our community, local leaders are considering the usual menu of “fixes”: incentives, public land, expedited permits, density bonuses, and impact-fee waivers for “affordable” projects.
From a conservative, market-based perspective, that approach will not solve the problem; it will exacerbate it. Lasting affordability does not come from subsidies, mandates, or selective waivers. It comes from market-driven supply, secure property rights, lighter regulation, and an economy strong enough to raise wages. Government “help” too often distorts incentives, shifts costs onto others, and replaces durable solutions with dependency, inefficiency, and predictable unintended consequences.
Housing becomes more affordable when markets are allowed to work. Prices signal scarcity. Builders respond by producing more of what people actually need. But when government subsidizes favored projects while maintaining zoning barriers, permit delays, and costly mandates, it drives up costs for everyone. The result is not affordability, but artificial scarcity, higher prices, and a heavier burden on taxpayers.
We have seen this pattern before. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the federal government’s flagship subsidy program, channels billions of dollars into housing while often producing units at costs far above comparable market-rate construction. Too much of the value is captured by developers and intermediaries rather than translated into broad affordability. The restrictions are temporary, the projects frequently cluster in lower-income areas, taxpayers pay more, and bureaucracy expands.
Flagler County and Palm Coast are in no position to paper over these realities by waiving impact fees or handing out density bonuses. Impact fees exist for a simple reason: growth should pay for growth. If government selectively waives those fees for “affordable” projects, the bill does not disappear—it lands on existing residents through higher taxes, special assessments, deferred maintenance, or overburdened public services. In a community already straining under growth, that is not compassion—it is cost-shifting. And when density bonuses are layered on top, the pressure on roads, drainage, and water systems only intensifies.
That burden falls on the very people local government should not be penalizing: longtime residents who worked, saved, bought homes, and planned responsibly for retirement. Forcing them to subsidize new development violates basic fairness. It punishes prudence and rewards political favoritism. In a free society, government should protect earned security—not erode it in the name of social engineering.
Instead of subsidizing select projects, Flagler County and Palm Coast should remove the barriers that make all housing more expensive. That means reducing red tape and reexamining costly requirements—parking mandates, buffer rules, and other regulations that add expense without adding value. If local leaders want more affordable housing, they should look at ways to make housing less expensive to build.
More importantly, local officials should focus on growing the economy rather than redistributing scarcity. Lower taxes, lighter regulation for commercial and industrial sectors, and a pro-business climate can attract industry, expand opportunity, and raise wages. Families are far better served by policies that help them earn more in a competitive economy than by government programs that merely reshuffle who bears the cost of a broken housing market.
If the city or county provides any direct assistance at all, it should be narrow, transparent, and temporary—aimed at truly specific needs, not open-ended commitments that outlast their justification. As a conservative, I believe people flourish through freedom, responsibility, secure property rights, and voluntary exchange—not through government allocation of wealth. So-called affordable housing initiatives too often crowd out private solutions, punish taxpayers who played by the rules, and leave communities with bigger bills and weaker infrastructure. The answer is not more intervention—it is less. We need a renewed commitment to the market principles that made broad prosperity possible in the first place. Let markets work, and housing will become more attainable through opportunity, not dependency.
Theresa Carli Pontieri, an attorney, was elected to the the District 2 seat on the Palm Coast City Council in 2022 and is a candidate for the District 2 County Commission seat this year.
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