Inside Palm Beach County’s $200 Million Strategy for Affordable Housing

Palm Beach County, Florida, is facing an affordable and workforce housing crisis. As housing prices and rents continue to rise, the county created the Housing Bond Loan Program to fund the development and preservation of affordable and workforce housing while determining where investments can have the greatest community benefit.

In 2022, 55% of Palm Beach County voters approved the $200 million housing bond. The vote demonstrated how important housing had become to residents, as voters were willing to support a tax increase to address the community's housing affordability challenges, signaling broad recognition that housing is connected to residents' economic stability and quality of life.

A Planning Framework to Determine Housing Location

Palm Beach County's approach starts with a simple idea: where housing is built matters.

The county brought renters, seniors, essential workers, municipalities, developers and community organizations into the process, helping connect housing investments to transportation, jobs, schools and services. Rather than distributing funding based solely on the availability of development sites, the county created a planning-centered scoring system to evaluate where housing investments can have the greatest impact.

The program also uses geographic analysis to direct investments toward communities where they can address the greatest needs. This means projects must demonstrate how they respond to community priorities and fit within the county’s broader planning framework.

The program is designed to serve households up to 140% of the area median income (AMI), including extremely low-income households, seniors, families and essential workers.

Planners developed the scoring framework in coordination with the county’s comprehensive plan, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Consolidated Plan and regional mobility strategies.

How Palm Beach Made Every Dollar Count

By 2025, the county had begun issuing funding through the program and approving its first projects. Of the $200 million housing bond, more than $160 million in bond loans have been approved to date, helping leverage more than $1 billion in total development costs — nearly $6 for every $1 of county funding.

Currently, bond loans have been approved across 21 projects, supporting the development of more than 2,500 affordable units. Those investments are projected to leverage more than $2.2 billion in total development costs when the full bond is deployed.

The county uses its funding as gap financing, helping close the funding gap that can prevent affordable and workforce housing projects from moving forward. Developers can combine the county's investment with other public and private resources, including Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL) funds and private capital. That leverage allows the county to stretch its local investment across a larger portfolio of housing projects.

By pairing local financing with a data-driven process for evaluating where investments can have the greatest community benefit, Palm Beach County is not simply putting more money into housing; it is using public dollars strategically to support projects that align with broader community priorities. The Housing Bond Loan program illustrates how planning can help determine not only how much to invest in housing but also where those dollars can go furthest.

The Next Phase for Palm Beach

Palm Beach County is continuing to develop the program and evaluate its early investments while looking for ways to create more sustainable funding opportunities. Future efforts include exploring revolving loan funds and other financing approaches, completing the final phase of implementation planning, and evaluating the initial projects to inform future phases.

By putting planning at the center of its housing finance strategy, Palm Beach County is using public dollars to do more than close financing gaps. It is creating a framework to direct investment, connect housing to opportunity, and leverage local resources to expand the supply of affordable and workforce housing.

Top image: Courtesy of the Housing Bond Loan Program team.