TAMPA, Fla. — If you're struggling to pay the bills while living in Tampa, a new study found you're not alone.
According to the study from WalletHub, Tampa is among the top ten cities with the most people in financial distress.
Tampa claimed the eighth spot on the list with a total score of 63.68. Three other Florida cities also made the top ten, including Jacksonville in third place, Orlando in sixth, and Miami in ninth.
"WalletHub defines financial distress as having a credit account in forbearance or with deferred payments, meaning the account holder has been granted temporary relief from making payments due to financial hardship," the study says.
Houston, Texas, took first place, while Atlanta, Georgia, came in second.
To conduct their research, WalletHub compared the 100 largest cities without data limitations in six categories: credit score, people with accounts in distress, average number of accounts in distress, change in number of bankruptcy filings from Dec. 2023 to Dec. 2024, "debt" search interest index and "loans" search interest index.
WalletHub said they determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score.
“You know, it might just be time we take a look if HOAs are really even necessary.
Maybe we should just do away with homeowner associations as a whole.”
South Florida lawmaker Rep. Juan Carlos Porras (R-Miami) says it may be time to do away with homeowners associations altogether, as more Floridians speak out about rising fees, costly lawsuits, and even arrests tied to HOA disputes. He said this week that he is considering filing legislation in the next session that would abolish HOAs statewide.
