TAMPA, Fla. (WFTS) — Tampa City Council members spent Thursday morning in a workshop that addressed one of the city’s biggest challenges: how to manage explosive growth while keeping housing affordable for residents.
Evan Johnson, a city planner, walked the council through the findings of Tampa’s first comprehensive housing needs assessment in more than a decade.
Watch full report from Jada Williams
“This is not something we can subsidize our way out of,” said Johnson as he walked council through the 100-page study. “It will take both public and private efforts to build the housing units we need.”
The data confirmed what many residents already feel: the city has been growing faster than its housing supply can keep up. Households grew 20% in the last decade. Smaller household sizes mean even more units are needed to accommodate population growth.
The mix of housing has also changed. Townhomes and large apartment complexes are growing, but mid-sized multi-family buildings and affordable “missing middle” units have declined.
Affordability remains the flashpoint. Home values are still up 58% since 2020, while rents have surged nearly 50%. More than half of renters are spending over a third of their income on housing.
“That generally means people are spending over 30% of their income, sometimes well over, just to have a place to live,” Johnson said.
Consultants projected that Tampa will need nearly 15,000 additional affordable units over the next 20 years. That includes 6,100 in central Tampa and 5,200 around USF. Subsidizing that level of construction could cost nearly $5 billion, or approximately $240 million annually, which is far beyond the city’s resources.
“It’s really impossible for the city,” Johnson said. “The state does not have enough money to do this. So what’s the next thing we need to look at? It’s really about those market solutions.”
At the Housing Needs Assessment presentation, Johnson broke down just how sharp Tampa’s affordability crisis has become.
Tampa’s Peak Typical Rent in July of 2025 reached $2,180. The assessment found in 2025 (January through July), rent increased .4%. Since 2020, rent has increased by 49.9%.
Meantime, 53% of Tampa renters are considered cost-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on rent. Approximately 28% of renters are severely cost-burdened, spending more than 50% of their income just to keep a roof over their heads.
The study says there's a gap of over 26,000 between the number of households and the number of affordable and available units for people living under 50% AMI.
Johnson explained that this growing mismatch between wages and rent is the heart of Tampa’s housing challenge. Even as new apartments rise across the city, too many households are stretched far past the affordability line.
Policy tools on the table
The consultants recommended reforms, including allowing homeowners to rent out accessory dwelling units (sometimes called “mother-in-law flats”), eliminating minimum lot sizes, reducing parking requirements near transit, pre-approving building plans, and offering incentives for developers who build affordable units.
Council members said those ideas track closely with changes already being considered in the city’s comprehensive plan and land development code overhaul.
Councilwoman Lynn Hurtak said the study validated their direction.
“This is really aligned with exactly the kinds of stuff we have talked about and we’ve heard about… that we need to show increase in density in some of these central areas,” she said.
Councilman Guido Maniscalco pushed for investment in East Tampa and Seminole Heights, where land remains more affordable.
“This is not gentrification,” he said. “This is investing in the communities and saying people can live, work and play there.”
Others worried that Wall Street-backed investors would snap up single-family homes if interest rates dropped.
“They’re killing the affordability, they’re killing the American dream,” one council member said.
The administrator’s view
Abbye Feeley, Tampa’s Administrator of Development and Economic Opportunity, said the study is already shaping policy.
“We undertook the housing needs assessment to understand our needs as a city, and where our greatest need was,” Feeley told the Tampa Bay 28 reporter Jada Williams. “I think we’ve heard recently a lot of the housing we’ve gotten is in between that 80% and 140% area median income, and that’s not necessarily where our need is.”
The city is also bracing for the expiration of affordability agreements on about 1,000 units by 2032. Those apartments were built decades ago with requirements that capped rents for 30 or 50 years.
“These are units that, at the time they were built, had affordability periods on them,” Feeley explained. “While over the next eight years they come offline, we will be introducing new units that will be coming online. So hopefully that impact will not be substantially negative.”
Feeley said she doesn’t want to set a hard number for how many affordable units the city must have by 2032 or 2045, but instead focus on keeping housing available across income levels.
“Teachers, firefighters, our service workers, when they are having to spend more than 30% of their income, that’s when we suffer from not being able to adequately support our workforce,” she said.
More than half of Tampa residents rent, Feeley noted, which adds urgency.
“I think it’s like 52% that rent, and 48% that are homeownership,” she said.
She pointed out that higher-income renters often occupy units intended for lower-income households.
“That impacts the inventory available to those at the lower end that really are counting on those units that were established to serve them as being available,” she said.
What comes next
Feeley emphasized that the city’s approach has to be multifaceted. Beyond building, Tampa is using redevelopment funds, down payment assistance, and even move-in assistance to help residents.
“A lot of our residents who need that lower-income housing, really the challenge is, how do I get my security deposit and my first and my last month’s rent all put together and pay the rent?” she said. “So we are able to help people get into that housing… and they’re not trying to pay themselves back.”
The city is also looking at missing middle housing types and accessory dwelling units as part of the code update.
Accessory dwellings, Feeley explained, are “a smaller housing unit that goes behind the main housing unit… Some people refer to them as mother-in-law flats.”
Feeley said Tampa’s housing struggle is part of a larger, national challenge.
“This is not a Tampa problem, it’s not a Florida problem, it’s a national problem,” she said. “And it’s not just a housing problem. It’s a community and an economy problem.”
She added: “When you have people who have to drive 30 or 45 minutes on the roads, creates congestion, can’t live where they’re working, can’t recreate where they’re living, and can’t spend the money that they’re making in their own city — it’s just so multifaceted.”
Council members closed the workshop with praise for the data and staff’s work.
“This is an excellent presentation,” Councilman Bill Carlson said. “Most of us are data geeks. We like seeing data like this, and it’s very helpful.”
Housing reforms will continue to play out through the city’s comprehensive plan and code rewrite over the next year.
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