Shimberg Center for Housing Studies

The Shimberg Center for Housing Studies was established at the University of Florida in 1988 to promote safe, decent and affordable housing and related community development throughout the state of Florida.

News Highlights

Shimberg Center/WUSF project tracks corporate single family buyers

7/3/2024Large investors own a growing share of single family rental homes in the Tampa Bay region. A four-part WUSF-FM series describes the experiences of homeowners, renters, and neighborhoods with corporate-owned homes. The series highlights the work of Shimberg Center researcher Renz Torres, who teamed up with Gabriella Paul of WUSF-FM to identify major investors in the region.

Florida’s Workforce: What does % Area Median Income (AMI) mean?

6/24/2024A new set of infographics shows income, rents, and job examples for households from 50% to 120% AMI for Florida county and metro areas. View all fact sheets here or find the infographic for your area on our Publications page.

2024 Statewide Rental Market Study Update

1/11/2024The Shimberg Center has released Florida Rental Market Study: Winter 2024 Update. The new data brief updates key findings from the 2022 Rental Market Study. The brief estimates that 862,442 low-income Florida households pay more than 40% of their income for rent, including 347,312 households age 55+. View the update for the most recent data on rental needs of older households, renter participation in Florida's workforce, and county-level cost burden figures.

Shimberg Center’s 2023 Annual Report

12/22/2023We are pleased to share the Shimberg Center’s 2023 Annual Report. The report highlights current trends in housing production, prices, and affordability and describes the Center's teaching, research, and technical assistance activities. Key findings from the housing trends section:

  • Florida produced approximately 125,000 single family homes in 2022. The top construction hotspots in the state? Polk, Lee, and Pasco Counties.
  • Florida added 107 affordable multifamily developments with 12,715 units in 2022 and 2023. All received funding from Florida Housing Finance Corporation.
  • Florida’s median single family home price reached $400,000 in the first half of 2023. Even adjusted for inflation, that’s higher than the previous peak in 2006.
  • Over 862,000 low-income renters pay than 40% of their income for housing, including nearly 347,000 age 55+ households.

For more data on housing supply and needs at the city, county, and state level, visit the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse.

From UF News: Five key findings from Miami-Dade County’s affordable housing analysis

12/4/2023Read the UF News story here.
Renters and frontline workers are the hardest hit by Miami-Dade County's shortage of affordable housing options, according to a new analysis of Census and employment data from the University of Florida's Shimberg Center for Housing Studies (on behalf of Miami Homes for All).

The report updated the Housing Data Appendix from the Miami-Dade Affordable Housing Framework that was published in 2020. The analysis incorporates updates to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey, showing some of the impacts of the sharp increase in housing costs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Five key findings from the report include:

  • Most Miami-Dade households with incomes below $75,000 struggle with housing costs. Half of all households in the county are "cost-burdened," meaning these individuals pay more than 30% of their income for housing. This includes three-quarters of households with incomes below $75,000 per year.
  • Renters with modest incomes are the hardest hit. A total of 90% of Miami-Dade renters with incomes below $50,000 are cost-burdened.
  • Black and Latino households are more likely to be cost-burdened. Nearly half (48%) of Black and Latino households are cost-burdened, compared to 38-41% of other households. Much of the disparity stems from lower homeownership rates among Black and Latino households. Homeowners of any race and ethnicity are less likely to be cost-burdened than renters from any other group.
  • The county has a gap of 90,181 affordable and available units for renter households with incomes below 80% of the area median income. This gap is projected to grow to nearly 116,000 units by 2030 unless affordable units are added. The county has an estimated 31,926 cost-burdened homeowners living on 80-120% of the area median income. This gap can be reduced by adding homes at sale prices between $200,000 and $400,000.
  • Most of the fastest-growing jobs in Miami-Dade County pay less than $19 per hour. Of the 21 occupations expected to add 1,000 or more workers by 2030, 14 have a median hourly wage of $19 or less. These jobs include medical assistants and home health aides, cooks and waitstaff, housekeepers, and warehouse and delivery staff. This workforce can afford housing units with monthly costs ranging from $650 to $1,000.

"Rents and home prices are out of reach for workers in the fastest-growing jobs in health care, hospitality, and logistics in Miami-Dade County," said Anne Ray, the manager of the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse at UF's Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. "These employees can afford housing that costs $650 to 1,000 per month, which is nearly impossible to find in one of the country's most expensive housing markets."

Statewide Rental Market Study: Data Update

3/10/2023The Shimberg Center's new brief, Florida's Affordable Rental Housing Needs: Spring 2023 Update, finds that 825,990 of Florida's low-income renter households pay more than 40% of their income for housing. The brief uses newly available data to update the Center's Rental Market Study, released in Summer 2022. View the update for the most recent data on rental needs of older households, renter participation in Florida's workforce, and county-level cost burden figures.

New Additions to the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse

7/13/2022The Shimberg Center has added new data and applications to the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse. The Affordability application now includes data on housing cost burden by race and ethnicity, gender/family type, and age of householder. The new Workforce & Employment application includes unemployment rates, employment by industry, and comparisons of housing costs to wages by industry and occupation in Florida communities. The Evictions & Foreclosures application provides monthly counts of eviction and foreclosure filings by county dating back to 2019. For more information, contact us at fhdc-comments@shimberg.ufl.edu.

2022 Statewide Rental Market Study

6/27/2022 The Shimberg Center's 2022 Rental Market Study finds that over 768,000 low-income renters in Florida are paying more than 40 percent of their income for their housing. Of these households, 39 percent are headed by someone age 55 or older-the largest share since the Center began producing the triennial study for Florida Housing Finance Corporation in 2001. The 2022 report also discusses the rental housing needs of homeless individuals and families, farmworkers, fishing workers, and persons with special needs, and outlines preservation risks to Florida's assisted rental housing stock. For more information, contact Anne Ray at aray@ufl.edu.

Data: Eviction and Foreclosure Filings Data for Florida Counties

5/17/2021 The Shimberg Center's Evictions & Foreclosures data application now includes eviction and foreclosure filing counts in Florida county and circuit courts. The evictions data was recently featured in Locked Out, an Orlando Sentinel series on the impacts of COVID-era evictions on Florida renters.

The database tracks evictions and foreclosures filed across the state from January 2019 to December 2020. We plan to update the filing records quarterly. Users can view monthly eviction and foreclosure totals by county, the rate of evictions and foreclosures per 1,000 households, and the change in these figures between 2019 and 2020.

Across Florida counties, eviction filings were actually lower April-July 2020 compared to the previous year, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis implemented a statewide moratorium halting the entire process. Filings started to rise in August and September as the moratorium conditions became more narrowly tailored. A COVID-19 specific cause of nonpayment was required, and landlords could still file an eviction, with the final action on hold. In September, the state's moratorium was replaced by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratorium, which has been extended through June 2021. This moratorium only protects rental eviction and requires that tenants declare a COVID-19 related job or income loss. In most counties, eviction filings ticked up steadily throughout the rest of 2020.

Research Brief: Shaping Healthy Affordable Housing through Policy, Design, Place

12/16/2020 New research from the Shimberg Center and University of Illinois looks at the role of state policy in promoting healthy living environments in homes funded by the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The researchers studied a wide array of health factors including healthy neighborhood environments, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, noise, green building materials, and more.

Explore our Data Clearinghouse