TEMPLE TERRACE, Fla — The City of Temple Terrace is making changes to its comprehensive plan drafted in 2010. The plan explains the vision for the city includes building thousands of affordable housing units, but the city is now saying it is unrealistic.
Temple Terrace's comprehensive plan said by 2040 it expects the city to need more than 7,000 housing units, with almost 3,000 being affordable housing. Officials say the area is growing, but there's not enough room to accommodate those numbers.
Large swaths of land are uncommon due to development.
“Pretty much what you have, is what you have,” said city manager Carlos Baia.
The city's Imagine 2040 plan guides how the city should handle growth. The plan said more than 7,000 housing units are needed, but Baia said that's impossible.
“That would mean that we would grow by more than 18,000 people, that's what that number means. 7,400 is about 18,000 people of growth. We don't have the room to grow by 18,000 people,” Baia said.
Baia says Temple Terrace leaders recently realized this issue at a public meeting. Now, the city is changing housing expectations for the area.
“They don't understand where those assumptions came from, the data was flawed,” Baia said. “In fact, the new number for growth for our city over the 2040 comp plan is about 2,200 housing units total so that's market rate, affordable everything which will be about 5,500 people or so which is in line with our growth. We've grown about 5,000 in about 20 years,” Baia said.
The average price for a home on the market is reportedly $350,000. As for new affordable housing projects, developers are still facing the challenge of finding a spot to build.
“For example, several months ago there was a workforce housing development that was looking in Temple Terrace. We were in discussion with that developer. Their challenge was they couldn't find a piece of land big enough,” Baia said.
Despite limited space, Michael Pergolatti with St. Vincent de Paul Corpus Christi conference said the need is still there.
“Last year from October of ‘23 to September of ‘23, we helped just a little under $40,000 in TECO bills alone and a little under $20,000 in rental assistance,” Pergolatti said.
And more than 180,000 pounds of food. The church group aid to families in need, but mostly the Temple Terrace community.
“We will definitely go beyond ‘23's numbers for sure,” Pergolatti said.
“Our community doesn't have a lot of Greenfields where you can see somebody coming in and saying I'm going to build a 500-unit apartment complex. We're limited physically with our boundaries so that's not happening here,” Baia said.
The City of Temple Terrace said affordable housing is a statewide issue. It supports Florida’s Live Local Act which provides incentives for developers to build more affordable housing along with down payment and closing cost assistance to first-time home buyers.