Forward Pinellas helps track affordable housing in Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - It’s one of the biggest investments in making housing more affordable for Floridians that state leaders have made. Now, a local group in Pinellas County is helping local leaders check if it’s working.

Lawmakers passed the Live Local Act last year, pouring more than $700 million into increasing the availability of affordable housing opportunities for people who want to live in the communities they work in. 

Jared Austin, a principal planner with Forward Pinellas, is one of the brains behind the Live Local Affordable Housing Dashboard. It tracks affordable housing units that are a result of the Live Local Act, or a result of two other similar pieces of legislation, in Pinellas County.

READ: Florida condo listings soar as sales sink amid high insurance rates, HOA fees

The dashboard was launched in February. Austin said so far, they’ve noticed a lot of projects fall into the higher area median income bracket.

"The majority of units we're seeing get built are in that 120% AMI category, which is that higher kind of income bracket that's still deemed affordable by the legislation," he said. 

"The majority of the projects at this point are getting built on our industrial lands or our targeted employment lands," Austin said.

"On the one hand, it's trying to drive affordability, but on the other hand, we're also losing kind of targeted employment lands to do that. And so, there's kind of that Catch 22 … we just want to make sure we have data tracked over time so that if it is driving affordability, great, but if it's not, maybe we need to take a step back and rethink some of these policies," Austin said.

MORE: Home buyers need to make $47,000 more than in 2020 to afford a home

Local governments in Pinellas County let Forward Pinellas know when they have a project that falls under the dashboard’s category, and Austin and others manually put the information into the database. While he said it mainly helps public officials and policymakers, the public can access the dashboard too. 

"This legislation that gets passed that comes from the state legislature, it impacts everyone, right? It’s not just impacting work that government does, and so, you know, having tools like this can help show how many affordable units are getting built in their communities," he said.

Austin said they’ll need at least a few years to get enough data to come to any conclusions. He said the dashboard also links to the Florida Data Clearinghouse, so people can take a closer look at prices that can be charged per unit for each area median income category.

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