 folks is Dr. Elizabeth Strom. She is an associate professor of arts. She's an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of South Florida. She's previously been the director of the USF Office of Community Engagement and Partnership, and Dr. Strom is an expert in urban development and affordable housing. We're going to talk to Dr. Strom. Elizabeth, welcome to TFNN. Thank you. It's great to be here. So, bottom line, urban affairs, affordable housing. Why do cities have such a problem supplying affordable housing? Well, because cities are expensive places to be. The things that make cities attractive, why we all want to be there, why employers want to be there. There's a lot of demand on the real estate. As you know, if there is a lot more demand and the supply is limited and the prices will go up. Have you seen, I have personally quite a bit of experience with this. I have a construction company, but I'm in the real estate business in a large way. What I've found, and I've been doing this 40 years, is that every time that there's a downdraft in the market, the cities don't buy or don't take care of the land that they have inside of cities. When it's cheap. When it's cheap. I mean, the bottom line is that the city of St. Pete. I'm from Boston. I started happening in South Boston. I started happening at St. Pete. When 2007 to 2012, you could buy all of St. Pete, and the city never did anything. You know, one of the things that's frustrating for those of us who work in affordable housing is that you're absolutely right that just exactly when land is cheap, cities should be buying it or counties should be buying it, land banking it. Cities and counties are usually having their own fiscal problems because when land is cheap, it means that property values are down, property tax collections are down. And so they're often laying off workers and feeling like they're pretty broke. So you'd think that that would be the time for them to be in the market. That's why I'm hopeful that some of the federal aid coming to our cities and counties right now, thanks to the most recent bill that was passed by Congress, will actually give them some capital that they could invest to buy land and bank it for future affordable housing. What do you find is the biggest challenge? I guess let's talk about St. Pete. What do you find is the biggest challenge in St. Pete? You can take any city you like, basically politically and fundamentally getting housing built. Well, I think that some of the challenges are that a lot of our zoning regulations aren't necessarily hospitable to increasing density and that often residents who kind of like being in a single family neighborhood may be opposed to greater densities. But if we're going to have more affordable housing in cities, we're going to need to have neighborhoods that have higher density. So I think just having that conversation about where density is appropriate and how could we encourage it so that the design is good and we still have open spaces. I think that's a really important conversation to have and one that I see happening in St. Petersburg. And you bring up a great topic. And you know, for the folks right across the country, the zoning issue is a monster issue because it always seems that and this can happen. And I've seen this happen in liberal neighborhoods that, you know, someone that is on the liberal side and say, okay, we want affordable housing, but guess what? I don't want next to me. That's right. There's a reason that one of our favorite acronyms in the planning area is NIMBY, not in my backyard. And there's certainly other places where dense building may not be appropriate. We have to be mindful of environmental problems. We don't want to build in flood zones. We don't want to impinge on wetlands. But where you already have development, where you already have infrastructure, those are places often that can take a little bit more building. And so we need to make sure that we're not wasting well connected areas to single family homes when we could be actually encouraging townhomes or garden apartments that would that would be really lovely in cities like St. Pete. Sure. Now you've done a lot of work across the country. Have you found that some cities are better than other cities doing this? I think they, I think they all are a bit resistant. Now, I do know that Minneapolis recently changed their zoning code to basically eliminate single family zoning. And so just before people get like very upset about that, it's not that they're saying you can't have single family homes. What they're saying is we're not going to have neighborhoods that are zoned exclusively for single family homes. So maybe that there are places where the market says single family homes are the best use of this land. Yes. But there's not going to be any neighborhoods where you cannot build multifamily housing just because of the zoning. So I think that that's a good step. Let let the market decide whether this is a good place for multifamily housing and don't have our zoning codes dictate that. Right. And we know that as soon as that happens, of course, developers like myself will basically will be all over that. And that raises the prices also. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. But what do we do about that? Right. Well, I think I mean, you're right. And in fact, this is the thing I discussed with my students that there's some literature that says like anytime you do anything good in any city, prices are going to go up. So does that mean you never have a park? You never have a community garden? And so that's why I think we have to have the market, but we also have to have public policies that help those who can't afford to purchase a rent housing on their own. If you look at what people earn at, you know, at or below the median income, there's really no way that the market's going to create housing opportunities for people who earn twenty thousand and twenty five thousand dollars a year. So that's why we have government. We need governments up to these so that people can afford to live in cities like St. Pete. Yes. And the tax credits are great. There is no doubt about that. I mean, the bottom line is that you get a tax credit when you're coming into a city to do affordable housing. If you do affordable housing, whether it's an apartment building 50 percent to subsidize 50 percent market rate is a great way to go. What do you think is the so in urban settings? What else do you think should be done in urban settings? That we get better cities? Well, I'm a big fan of density not only because it's going to help with housing costs, but also it's only through density that we get transit and transit also helps with housing costs. When you look at what it costs to live somewhere, we need to think about not just the cost of your rent or your mortgage, but how much you pay to get around. So if you live in a place where your family needs two or three cars, it's going to add a lot to your cost of living. So I think density brings down the cost of housing, brings down the cost of transportation, allows for greater commercial development. So I think that density helps in a lot of ways and not just with the cost of the apartment. Well, I'll tell you God bless you because the bottom line is and folks across the country know it. And listen, I'm a big proponent of both of the affordable housing and the density. And in St. Pete, folks, what has happened is that we're getting more transit. There's no doubt about that. But as transit goes from one community to another community, the other community is always saying, Well, not my backyard. The last thing they want is someone from St. Pete coming to St. Pete Beach. We've had this discussion, folks. Okay. And underlying it is a lot of different issues. But the bottom line is that, you know, every community faces us and transit is where it's at. I mean, it's amazing, but you've got to get through those social issues, right? You do. And I hope that people realize, first of all, that if they think about the cost of having that extra car in their family, they may be more amenable to transit. Also, we all benefit from a more mobile population because if you want to hire someone, let's say to work in your restaurant out at St. Pete Beach. Yes. How are they going to get there? And so we have to think about this as a community that that we benefit from more mobility. We all have more options when we're more mobile. And so I hope that our political leaders can make that case well to their constituents. Great point. Well, listen, we appreciate the education. I'm sure everyone's gonna put some good thought into it. And we'd love to have you back again, Elizabeth. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Have a great one. Have a safe one.