Missing middle housing: Who’s building for them?

Key points:

• • St. Petersburg and Clearwater face a growing “missing middle” housing gap impacting workforce affordability.
• • Developers and cities are targeting 60–100% AMI housing through new projects, zoning changes, and incentives.
• • Despite momentum, supply still lags demand, keeping pressure on middle-income renters and buyers.

April 2026 — In St. Petersburg and Clearwater, the missing middle housing gap is squeezing the workforce. Teachers, nurses, and firefighters earn too much to qualify for subsidized units and too little for market-rate rent. Now developers, planners, and city leaders across Tampa Bay are building directly into that void.

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St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and Pinellas County at large are among the most in-demand and most housing-stressed communities on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The area median income in Clearwater sits at approximately $98,000, and Pinellas County’s historically denser neighborhoods, including St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Dunedin, Gulfport, and Largo, have seen demand outpace supply at nearly every income tier.

St. Petersburg alone has identified a need to build or preserve 3,200 affordable units over the next decade just to meet existing demand, with the plan targeting more than 30,000 households citywide. Across the county, 1 in 2 families in the Tampa Bay area are now paying more than they can afford on rent, and a household earning 80% of AMI — roughly $78,000 — cannot comfortably afford average market-rate rents without crossing the 30% income threshold that defines housing burden.

The pressure comes from multiple directions at once. Retirees, remote workers, and short-term rental investors have driven up prices across Pinellas County, while new construction has concentrated at the luxury end of the market. Federal subsidy programs, meanwhile, are calibrated for households well below the median. What remains is a growing void in the middle — the nurses, teachers, and firefighters who earn too much to qualify for traditional affordable housing and too little to rent or buy at market rate. In St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and communities across Pinellas County, developers, planners, and city officials are now building directly into that void.

Three types of affordable housing — and who falls through the cracks

Not all affordable housing is built the same way, and understanding the distinctions matters for understanding who actually gets housed. Nick Hansen, partner at St. Petersburg-based HP Capital Group, has spent years working in the gap between the housing market’s two extremes.

“Affordable housing can mean different things. One type is a market-rate project with a portion of affordable units. Another is a fully affordable project without heavy subsidy. The third is what they call LIHTC projects, which involve significant subsidies and serve lower AMI levels,” Hansen told Invest: Tampa Bay.

Low-Income Housing Tax Credit projects are structured around two income tests: at least 20% of units must serve households at or below 50% of AMI, or at least 40% of units must serve households at or below 60% of AMI.The band in between, where most essential workers actually land, is the orphaned middle of a system designed around its extremes. HP Capital has deliberately staked its business model there. “HP Capital has positioned itself between the latter two. We build fully affordable projects that serve what we call the missing middle, generally in the 60 to 100 AMI range in Pinellas County,” said Hansen.

Who the missing middle actually serves

The abstraction of AMI percentages can obscure what is really at stake.

“We’re really trying to serve those folks falling into the gap — what the industry calls the missing middle. These are people like firefighters, teachers, and other workers who are not at poverty level but still cannot afford market-rate housing,” said Hansen.

They are the people who staff hospitals, teach in public schools, and keep restaurants and service businesses running in one of Florida’s most visited coastal corridors. The housing market, as currently structured, offers them little. HP Capital navigates the financing landscape to reach them. 

“AMI is calculated by county, and rent levels are tied to that. We are predominantly focused on the 80 to 100 AMI range. We work with nonprofits, use federal financing through HUD, and bring in private capital. That combination has been effective for our projects,” said Hansen.

In 2025, missing middle construction nationally saw its largest increase in 18 years, rising from 18,000 units in 2024 to 19,000 units — yet despite that surge, missing middle housing still composed just 5% of total multifamily construction in 4Q25. The gap between what is being built and what is needed remains vast.

Projects on the ground

The policy frameworks are translating into concrete development, sometimes slowly, sometimes after years of delay — but increasingly, they are coming online across both cities.

One of the most visible examples is Fairfield Avenue Apartments in St. Petersburg, a 264-unit, $94.2 million complex. It is the first Florida project to leverage 2021 state legislation permitting affordable housing on industrially-zoned land. Its unit mix spans 50% to 120% of AMI across one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, deliberately structured to serve the missing middle tiers. The project is financed through a combination of sources including $9.7 million in South St. Petersburg CRA funding, Pinellas County funding, a HUD 221(d)(4) construction loan, and developer equity. Construction is expected to run through mid- to late-2028.

In Clearwater, Archway Partners opened Clearwater Gardens in March 2026, an 81-unit, four-story building on the site of a former dilapidated inn. It was financed with 9% low-income housing tax credits and $610,000 in SHIP and HOME funds administered through the Clearwater Community Redevelopment Agency. The project targets households earning between 30% and 80% of area median income. 

Archway Partners is also active in St. Petersburg with the Flats on 4th, part of a regional pipeline that includes Clearwater Gardens and Seminole Square in Largo. At the larger end of the scale, Greystar — the country’s largest multifamily housing owner and developer — has proposed a garden-style apartment community on 24 acres of the former HSN headquarters campus in St. Pete, with at least 40% of units set aside as affordable housing.

Where the missing middle fits

Forward Pinellas, the county’s land use and transportation planning agency, identifies several location types as ideal for missing middle development: the perimeter of downtown areas and town centers; corridors adjacent to commercial strips; transition zones between single-family neighborhoods and larger multifamily buildings; and collector roads that serve as buffers between neighborhood types. The building types fit into existing neighborhoods exceptionally well because their size and scale are typically compatible with surrounding housing even at much higher densities than traditional single-family homes.

St. Petersburg has established a new NTM-1 zoning category to allow a variety of housing types with up to four units on a standard lot along the city’s major corridors, a shift that significantly reduces development timelines and financing risk. Derek Kilborn, manager of St. Petersburg’s urban planning and historic preservation division put it directly: “The Missing Middle is an appropriate housing type for walkable, medium-to-high density communities, so we are looking at our code to identify locations adjacent to commercial corridors and transition zones in single-family neighborhoods.”

Both cities have also expanded accessory dwelling unit permissions, allowing homeowners to add small units to existing properties. St. Petersburg’s Workforce Housing Density Bonus Program creates incentives for developers who price a portion of units at income-restricted levels, with a target of 350 new affordable units, while Clearwater’s Economic Development and Housing Department offers density bonuses, reduced parking requirements, and access to federal funding for projects targeting middle- and lower-income residents. The city’s Housing Infill Program provides construction and land-cost subsidies to make urban infill projects pencil out at restricted price points. St. Petersburg has also established guidelines for the use of $15 million in Penny for Pinellas funding to assist developers in acquiring land to develop affordable housing.

Clearwater’s housing challenge

For Clearwater Mayor Bruce Rector, the missing middle problem is inseparable from the city’s economic identity. The pressure on housing, he argues, does not come from one direction — it comes from several at once. 

“Housing is one of our most significant challenges. Coastal cities face intense demand from retirees, remote workers and short-term rental investors. That pressure makes it difficult to create enough attainable housing for the workforce needed to support our industries,” Rector told Invest: Tampa Bay.

That squeeze has forced the city to think differently about how it retains its workforce. When the market cannot move fast enough, supply-side strategy has to run alongside workforce development. “Because of those constraints, a key part of our strategy is to develop the talent that already lives here. Meanwhile, we are working hard to increase density and expand housing options within the city, though demand continues to outpace supply,” said Rector. 

Finding missing middle units: how technology is closing the search gap

For workforce renters actively looking for missing middle housing in St. Petersburg and Clearwater, the search itself has historically been difficult. Duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings are underrepresented on major listing platforms, which are optimized for large multifamily complexes and single-family homes. That gap is beginning to close. Frank Bazail, senior sales manager at Compass Tampa, points to how platform innovation is improving connectivity between renters and the units that actually fit their budget and location needs.

“One of the most important recent developments has been Compass One, a consumer-facing platform that keeps buyers and sellers closely connected to the agent. Through that platform, consumers can search for properties, comment on listings, request showings, and review documents in one place,” Bazail said in an interview with Invest: Tampa Bay.

For a workforce renter competing for a limited-inventory duplex in Grand Central or a small apartment building near Clearwater’s Cleveland Street corridor, speed and direct communication with an agent can be the difference between securing a unit and losing it. Bazail sees the streamlined environment as a structural shift, not a feature upgrade. 

“That kind of direct connectivity is a major advantage. Instead of relying on multiple emails or outside portals, everything is streamlined in an app-based environment. For agents, that improves communication. For consumers, it creates a more seamless experience from the first search through the transaction,” said Bazail.

As missing middle inventory grows across Pinellas County — through new construction, zoning reform, and ADU expansion — the tools that help renters and buyers find and secure those units quickly become a meaningful part of the affordability solution.

Whether these ambitions translate to scale will depend on sustained political will, continued federal and state funding flows, and a development community willing to work within income restrictions. HP Capital’s model — nonprofit partnerships, HUD financing, and private capital focused squarely on the 80–100% AMI tier — points toward what is possible without the deepest subsidies, if the regulatory environment cooperates.

The missing middle was not invented by planners. It was built, organically, by a previous generation of Floridians who needed somewhere affordable to live and built it at the scale of their neighborhoods. The task now is to make regulatory and financial space for it again — before the gap between what the market builds and what working households can afford becomes permanent.

Want more? Read the Invest: Tampa Bay report.