PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — It's getting more and more expensive to live in Tampa Bay and it seems like affordable housing is hard to come by.
"A struggle. It's slim pickings," said Cynthia Calleia, a resident in St. Pete.
Cynthia Calleia has struggled to find affordable housing over the last couple of years.
"Everything is in the way, like not having your three times the requirements to move in. Teachers can't even afford that sometimes in places," said Calleia.
She said even with new affordable housing projects coming to the Tampa Bay Area, it's not enough.
"66 units sounds wonderful for one developer, yeah, but to the community where we're all suffering, it doesn't sound great at all," said Calleia.
A state housing strategy called the Live Local Act is now in place. That act creates incentives for developers to include affordable housing in their projects.
"It's a start," said Calleia.
Now that developers are investing more in affordable housing, a local organization called Forward Pinellas has decided to track it all.
"The Live Local Dashboard really helps us catalog this information somewhere. It has key metrics tied to these projects that are coming online so that over time, we can kind of continue to track affordability," said Jared Austin with Forward Pinellas.
Organization leaders created a new online dashboard that organizes developments all over the county and details just how affordable the projects are.
"So, like 0 to 30 and 30 to 50 are the lower income, whereas once you get to the 50 to 80, 80 to 120, that's more the workforce kind of housing," said Austin.
Austin said the goal is to bring awareness to how much more affordable housing the county needs and identify if the new legislation is allowing too many developers to build housing in certain areas.
Austin said the new technology will help local governments balance how many affordable housing projects and new businesses come to the area.
Calleia hopes the dashboard helps bring the affordable housing crisis to light.
"It's a waiting list after waiting list, and you don't know what's going to happen," said Calleia.
