Tampa's Housing Market Is Getting Critical. I Believe It's 'By Any Means' Now

This essay was written on September 17, 2021, and should not be recognized as up-to-date in terms of the status, updates, and investigations mentioned below. For information, or questions Contact Me directly.

Tampa, FL - September 5, 2021

On the morning of Sunday, September 5th, I finally had gotten a chance to walk through my apartment to get a good look at what was going on with the sun up. I had just got off a red-eye flight from Miami that ultimately ended what was supposed to be an enjoyable vacation to Miami.

My boy and his wife had flown into Miami from L.A. - his first time back home since 2015 - and I felt like we had to have a good time for the road. We’re all in different places and spaces now, and it was a chance for us to enjoy each other’s presence now in the city where it had all started. We were young “foot-draggers”, as I liked to call it; we walked and took buses all around Miami back when we were teens in high school, and it was just a normal part of how we socialized. That night, we were in a caravan of a Mercedes-Benz GLE, a BMW X1, and a Jeep Wrangler. It was good to see and feel how times and life has changed for us all.

The vacation was cut short by a video call from another friend, in Tampa, letting me know that my apartment had been broken into. The door was left barely closed, with the doorpost completely smashed on the inside, and of course a whole lot of my stuff gone. Just the day prior to leaving for Miami, I had hosted the live stream for Live From the Living Room, where I had used my MacBook Air, my microphones, my webcam, and all of my audio equipment and cameras. They were mostly gone, too. My fridge and freezer were left open, which left melting ice running down into the body of the appliance and ultimately to the floor. Aside from the thousands of dollars in electronics gone, they also let my groceries go bad, too. Leaving my apartment in relative order and returning to find it completely turned upside down with so much of my belongings missing was, to say the least, painful.

My apartment was literally my sanctuary. It’s a quaint 750-sq.ft unit that is enough for me to live, workout, work my day job as a Partner Implementation Consultant, write my books, create content, and do the occasional in-home photo shoot. Most importantly, it’s on the third floor, the floor people like me choose to live on when they’ve been robbed while living on the first floor. I used to think the more flights of stairs, the more security, but that idea has somewhat gone out the window - or in this case , the front door.

Damages and losses aside, there is this optimism in me that is glad that, ultimately, I’m okay. Whoever the perpetrators were waited for a holiday weekend, to possibly wait for me not to be home (as seen by dark curtains), and capitalized on what may or may not otherwise be a jackpot for them. We’re living in desperate times for a lot of people. Between the chronic inflation we’re seeing across nearly all goods, we’re also seeing widespread job loss, and of course, the big one: a housing crisis that’s going to see evictions on a level like we’ve never seen. I hate to make excuses for the bad things that happen in the world (especially when they happen to me), but I also can’t help but recognize that some things are symptoms of larger problems. People are getting desperate because the times are starting to call for it.

Desperation only begets desperation.

As of September 7th, Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties have seen surges in evictions from rental properties. In a recent ABC Action News article, a local Pinellas County non-profit has been helping upwards of 100 families per week, which is drastically up from 20 - 30 last October. Armed police officers have been evicting tenants and residents from properties throughout the third week of September as non-profits in the area do their best to accommodate the thousands of families that will soon have nowhere to go. Shelters are filling up fast, long-stay hotels are filling up fast, too, and the situation only continues to get more dire as the days go by. The eviction moratorium could be reversed, but it becomes a political game of siding with tenants or landlords.

Among the hundreds of thousands of new, open properties, you’d hope that they would go for something low since they’re fresh on the market, but unfortunately, “Champa Bay” has attracted so many transports here, either by way of championships or fun-looking marketing that’s invited tech companies to the area for sunshine, no income tax, and nice beaches (that only look good in pamphlets, but not with actual 900-lb manatees and goliath grouper dead from Red Tide). These newly opened units are going to surge to the price that makes sense for the market that we are currently in, which I gotta say is disgusting.

In my complex, a resident posted in a closed Facebook Group that her rent for her studio unit was going up to $1250 from $934 per month. Rental properties across the Bay are spiking upwards now into the $1600 per month range for one-bedroom units, and with all of this new availability, you can bet that the prices will now climb continually until either someone puts some regulation in place, the market completely collapses on itself, or absolute chaos ensues.

While the cost of rent is increasing, it’s not enough to think that a person displaced by eviction can “just find another place to live”. It would be violently naive to think that. It would be suspension of disbelief to even see that as realistic. This eviction situation is boiling hot right now, and, under a Tampa Police Department policy, TPD reports police stops and arrests to public housing property management companies to have those perpetrators evicted.

To rephrase that: if you live in public housing, and are stopped by Tampa Police Department, it can and will be reported to your property’s management, and your family will be evicted. It happened to a 16-year-old who was arrest for a petty theft spree that awarded him just $4.44 in change. His family was evicted.

I had my worries about gentrification and snowbirds, but what we’re seeing here in Tampa is a bit more aggressive than just pop-up Starbucks or random joggers in your ‘hood. We’re watching a systemic, highly operational sweep of a city that, just 7 years ago, had rent for $514 per month close to the University. Gentrification would be just a symptom of what we’re actually dealing with here, but the true source of it s really a growing wealth gap that was prophesized on the day we decided to vote for an increase in minimum wage last November.

“If we increase minimum wage, the price of everything will go up”. That was the prophesy. But as we’re seeing, it has nothing to do with minimum wage, especially since that isn’t set to take place in full for another 5 years in 2026. Instead, we’re seeing the steady process of moving the goal post early so that $15 is the new $7.25. The price of everything is going up just because. In Tampa currently, the average price of rent is $1634, and it requires a reported 3 minimum wage jobs to make rent and keep up with these spiking prices. Rent has jumped 34.9% since 2020 (up 22% just this year).

Just because.

I’m not talking downtown high rises, baby. I ain’t talking your Vinik-sponsored Channelside condo, either. I’m talking your ashy, dusty, valet-trashing, broken front gate, flickering street lights, built in 1989 apartment complex that hasn’t offered any upgrades or changes in that 34.9% increase. I’m talking your vanilla Tampa apartment complex - $1634 average.

I know it first hand because I happen to live in that dusty, broken front gate, flickering street lights building in a 1989 apartment complex, and as I worked diligently to try and secure my apartment to a comfortable place (at least for me to lay my head down again), I realized that I was okay - yes, I was fine - but I couldn’t say I felt safe. The integrity of what I deem “safe” and “comfortable” was gone. Someone climbed three flights of stairs, chose my apartment among the 8 or 9 they’d already passed and broke into my apartment.

I haven’t had any outsiders or guest.

I don’t host parties at my apartment.

I haven’t had any reason to believe I was being followed, stalked, or watched.

So, why me?

Since I don’t have my smart devices to play music or remind me to water my plants, my morning routines have actually been a lot quieter. Sade’s “When Am I Going to Make A Living” isn’t blaring while I make my coffee in my robe anymore. Unfortunately, I also can’t lay down at night and hear the intro soundfx for the Shudder streaming service from my projector and Google Chromecast TV before I watch a horror movie in the dark. I’m also so far behind on What If…? on Disney+. Lastly, any little sound that happens outside, puts me on high alert. It’s pretty unlikely that burglars would hit the same place twice, but these are unlikely times, too.

There’s just so much desperation out there, right? The culprits have yet to be found.

While they did take my PS4, my smart devices, my projector and most of my entertainment, I’m grateful they didn’t take my Sony bluetooth speaker and my webcam. It’s random. But I’m glad. Ironically, the speaker is worth more than Google Minis. I also don’t quite understand why they’d take my deodorant and my cologne, but here we are.

As I’ve been awaiting word from the property management on moving me to a new, “safer” unit, I couldn’t help but think of what happens when a vacancy opens in properties like this. The price on that unit goes up. In all of the evictions across town, those vacancies may or may not see upgrades, but what they will see is proximity to that $1634 average for a one-bedroom. As I poured my cup of coffee that morning with Dr. Dre’s “The Watcher” playing, I realized that I could not (and will not) rule out the possibility that in this very aggressive market, that I was a vacancy waiting to happen, in hopes of having yet another unit that can be spiked to that new margin.

Out of curiosity, I asked the front desk agent what the asking price for my same unit would be if I was a prospective resident. The answer: $1469, which is very close to that 34.9% increase the area has been seeing in the last year. I, like that fellow resident in her studio, now fell into a bucket of residents who were still paying the old 2020 pricing, and I would imagine that complexes like this are beginning to work on getting us closer to that brand new, 2021 price.

My hope is that we’re not seeing an era of “By Any Means” from these properties, too.

But I also feel like there’s enough proof in the pudding.

happen to be fortunate enough to not be facing evictions, but I’m not sure others like me are entirely safe from this situation in its totality.

This essay is open to feedback, fact-checking, and follow up from visitors and readers regarding their own experiences and information on real estate, property management, legal advice, and more. You’re invited to leave comments below and follow up on information provided here by email. Fill out the form below for follow up. If you or someone you know is involved in a non-profit looking for additional support or resources for helping displaced/evicted families, please reach out as well.