Disney Backs $351 Million Affordable Housing Project in Florida, But Only Supports $30 Million For Anaheim

Artist rendering of the 1,400 unit affordable housing project The Walt Disney Company plans to build on land it owns in Florida.

By DUANE J. ROBERTS
Editor & Publisher

According to documents The Walt Disney Company filed with Orange County, Florida on June 12, 2023, The Anaheim Investigator has learned they are making preparations to construct a massive 1,400 unit affordable housing complex on roughly 80 acres of undeveloped land they own in that state–a project the Orlando Business Journal conservatively estimates will cost around $351 million to build.

In a cover letter Kathy Hattaway, a representative of Walt Disney Imagineering, submitted as part of the application process, she wrote it will provide “significant relief” to “affordable housing demand in West Orange County” and “will consist of up to 1,450 multifamily apartments … for individuals and families with incomes in the range of 50% – 100% of the Area Median Income (AMI).”

Though The Investigator doesn’t know if the company will be fronting most of the cash for this venture, a press release they posted on their Disney Parks blog reports that it will be “privately financed.” Moreover, on Disney Connect, another website owned and operated by them, not only do they say it won’t be “government funded,” but that they won’t “benefit financially from this development.”

From the Disney Connect website.

Contrast this with the modest–if not anemic–proposal Disney has put forth to win approval of DisneylandForward, their plan to add a third theme park in the resort area. They only want to cough up $30 million for affordable housing, of which they then expect the city to leverage it using large amounts of government funds, essentially making taxpayers subsidize building apartments for their low wage workforce.

It’s not clear why The Walt Disney Company has embarked on such an ambitious project in Florida. The Investigator believes their repeated run-ins with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis might have played a role. His appointees to the board of the now dissolved Reedy Creek Improvement District, the quasi-government body the company once controlled, have been critical of the entertainment giant.

In a scathing 72-page report released last year, they alleged this district, formed in 1967, was the “most egregious exhibition of corporate cronyism in modern American history,” noting it always “served Disney’s interests—not the interests of the wider community.” They further added it never demanded that “Disney built or set aside land for affordable housing before expanding resort properties.”