This is the real estate shop where each episode will bring you a top industry expert to share their current programs or projects that are making an impact in our communities today.
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Welcome to the real estate shop. Today we're lucky to have Leroy Moore, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Tampa Housing Authority.
Leroy, thanks for joining us. Pleasure to have you on the real estate shop. For the benefit of the audience, won't you just maybe give an introduction so they can get to know who you are?
Yes, hello, Curvin and Steven. It's a real pleasure to be on your show. Thank you so much for for the invitation.
I am Leroy Moore. I am currently the Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer for Tampa Housing Authority here in Tampa, Florida.
We're a public housing agency, but we actually are, you know, not your typical public housing agency in that we've got actually a multi-state reach in our business operations.
So we not only operate affordable housing that we own and manage that is subsidized by the federal government here in Tampa, Florida, but we also do contract work for the federal government statewide, Florida, over 43,000 units that we provide compliance and management.
And oversight and, you know, support to landlords as well as about 1500 units in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
And then we've got a number of other business, you know, business operations that we conduct that's always, you know, in the affordable housing arena. And what it does is that it gives us some independent revenue streams to help
support that underperforming asset class that we own, which is the public housing program.
So, so that's a little bit about Tampa Housing Authority and in particular I've been in this role for now 25 years, if you can believe it, and been in the industry for about 34 years, all total.
Having worked in the South and the North on the West Coast and on the East Coast and put down roots here in Tampa 25 years ago and best career decision I made.
Wow, 25 years.
Yes.
Looking at your LinkedIn profile. I see that you graduated from the University of Memphis.
Yes.
What was your professional progression from there when you left the university.
And back in those days, believe it or not, it was actually the Memphis Memphis State, not University of Memphis, but Memphis, Memphis State University.
MSU.
The MSU Tigers back in the day, I actually majored in architecture engineering technology as a 40 for your degree that actually, you know, gave you a little bit of engineering as well as a little bit of architecture.
You know, from there, got into the, the Memphis Housing Authority as a specifications writer writing technical specs for construction projects rose to my first directorship there.
Left Memphis Housing Authority for my first directorship outside of Memphis and Peoria, Illinois, believe it or not.
Home of Richard Pratt worked there for about four years and Peoria, rebuilding their public housing stock and, you know, got noticed by the executive director at that time of the Oakland Housing Authority, who often made the opportunity to come and work and work in Oakland, California.
Truly loved it out there, made some really great friendships and did some awesome work in Oakland.
Truly loved it, never saw myself leaving, believe it or not, until I got the phone call about the opportunity to be part of the receivership for the Washington DC Housing Authority.
And, you know, could not turn that opportunity down. So, you know, left Oakland in pursuit of that opportunity in DC was a three year turned into a three year job as part of the receivership team there.
And, you know, it was also the opportunity for me to start my own business because I was a contract employee there.
And from there, moved my business to Chicago, eventually to Atlanta and shut down my business when I took the job here in Tampa.
So you've been in Tampa for 25 years now. I mean, it's gonna get a lot of attention. A lot of folks are moving moving to Florida.
Particularly a lot of excitement around the live local act right now. What's been your, your perception of the market, Tampa, specifically over the years.
Yeah, Tampa is certainly hot, hot market, one of the hottest markets in the US.
In fact, price.
It's been a couple of years now. It's always been sort of top tier on the Irmland Institute annual trends report. I think we got to the top three or four. Just last year with you.
Really hot market. Beautiful weather in Florida is a big driver for that to cost a living in Florida, I think is another driver for that low taxes in Florida.
And we've seen consistent population in migration, mostly from the north and the northeast.
And then cities coming to the more affordable Florida where they can enjoy year round, pleasant weather and a lower cost of living.
So, you know, when I moved to Tampa in 1998, Tampa was not that cool hip city.
But really sort of got it stride. You know, in the early 2000s as we really started realizing that we didn't have any residential in our downtown core and our downtown core was our biggest job market and where the river was right through the center of downtown potential.
There was just enormous and just been overlooked for decades prior to that.
We had a great dynamic developer thinking mayor that got into office that realized that, you know, we really need to start making some strategic investments in the downtown core.
So that we can raise our, our living population there and turn our downtown into more of a 24 hour city.
And here we are, you know, 20 years or so later and I think, you know, that is greatly been realized in a large extent.
And then Ebor City is now come alive as a historic historic entertainment district where, you know, you get, you know, a lot of the clubs and music and and bars and, you know, it's a great tourist location so Ebor City is, you know, I think 2000 over 2000 residential units now, our
market is well over 6,000, 7000 units now, if not more, with the addition of our multi billion dollar project called Water Street, right on the right on the water in our downtown market.
The housing authority has been intricately involved in a lot of that in that we have holdings that are in downtown, you know, right on the river that we've over the last 15 years been able to position and redevelop and incredibly increase the density on so that we can not only replace
the public housing, the affordable housing that was there but double and triple the unit count of affordable housing that are on those sites, and at the same time, at market rate housing and other uses that actually bring jobs on site.
We've got two developments in the downtown market now that we've been redeveloping over the last decade or so on Cortampa, which went from 480 units of public housing now to 12 city blocks of development.
We have 1100 units occupied on that same site today. Another 800 units under construction. And that site will top out at about 2000 total units, just in the next two years.
In addition to residential. It would also have hotel, Tampa's African American History Museum, a new school and has a two acre urban farm now, and a great deal of retail.
So, you know, that same 12 city block that was single use public housing 480 units for 75 years for the next 75 years will be a very diverse 2000 unit mix use community
employing almost 1000 people on that same footprint.
You know, incredible transformative project.
That is a lead gold neighborhood development from a sustainability standpoint so.
And then just across the Hillsborough River we've got another very large 44 acre 17 phase project, if you can believe that that literally just kicked off six years ago.
And today, once again, we have 1100 units completed and occupied on that site.
We've got dual branded hotel that's under contract we've got Publix about to break ground on the grocery store on that site and we've got Lenard building.
Town homes for for sale on that same site.
Another very transformative site that will at the end of build out have about 2500 units that will replace the 670 units that we tore down.
So, you know, Tampa has grown enormously in the last 20 years and 10,000 authority has been a very key part of that downtown transformation, ensuring that average people have the ability to live in a prospering neighborhood.
Like our downtown living close to jobs, close to our best transportation options, but close to all our best cultural amenities.
So it's very important for us to have a community that welcomes everybody.
And is not just a luxury enclave, where all of the wealthiest people can afford to live there.
Excellent.
Kind of walk through what you guys do, which is amazing.
But when you got there 25 years ago, we were more development deals already being done.
What was it like when you first got there?
Yeah, when we first got here in 20, I'm sorry, in 1998, you know, Tampa Housing Authority was, you know, was a typical public housing agency and owned and managed public housing.
And it had a few section eight vouchers as well. So, at that time, we had, I want to say it was a 4000 public housing units and 2000 section eight vouchers.
So we were about 6000 total units in operation.
The public housing and section eight budget represented pretty much 99% of all of our revenues.
We were producing an annual budget of about 110,000, 110 million dollars.
Today we are about a half billion dollar year operation.
We've got 5000 public housing units, another 2000 privately owned affordable units and 9,000 section eight vouchers.
The condition of our assets at that time was being maintained.
If you can be happy with that, you know, it was maintaining old stock, some of which was obsolete.
Some of which was just, you know, in areas that did not support family needs.
And some of which just weren't being maintained well. So we, you know, started out in 1998 by doing a physical and social viability analysis on all of our assets.
It was 18 properties, looking at each one of them, deciding which one of them have long term physical viability as affordable housing and social viability as housing for families.
Now we found that two sites just did not have social viability or physical viability at all we divested ourselves of those two sites sold those properties for commercial development because they were located in areas that was very undesirable to help people living.
And then we had about half of our inventory that just needed to be repositioned in the market needed new amenities needed, you know, fresh look and major rehab on all those units so we systematically went through the city on all of those sites, doing what we call comprehensive
modernization.
Changing the roof line changing the landscape, reconfiguring some of the units, you know, just doing major rehab about 40 plus $1,000 per unit level renovations, so that those units survived for the next 20 years.
And so that those sites in those really choice neighborhoods weren't identifiable easily identifiable visually as poor housing poor people's housing low income house.
That's the public housing and those sites today really are indistinguishable in those neighborhoods as low income housing. They look just like, if not better than all the private housing in those neighborhoods.
And that's very important for us to have our families living in the community and not being stigmatized, because you know people can easily point to the public housing in the community.
And then the other half of our inventory.
Six big sites. We felt that needed to be torn down and redeveloped.
And once again, we systematically pursued grant funding and other, you know, funding opportunities to literally take down and rebuild those communities.
And we've systematically rebuilt all those communities now we're up to our last remaining obsolete public housing community large superblock.
And that is Robles Park Village and that is currently going through relocation and pause to start redevelopment starting next year.
This is out of curiosity for all those projects that you rehab, but were you, all of those tax credit deals or were you able to do some of that just with the refines and things of that nature.
Right. Most of them half of them were not tax credits or bond financed at all but they were rehab with capital fund dollars essentially rehab dollars that we received from the federal government for public housing.
So that was half of the inventory.
That was doing the comprehensive modernization.
The redevelopment sites, most of them were bun all of them was tax exempt bun financed with the exception of, I want to say, three developments that were 9% tax credit deals.
So when I say we took down six large properties.
You know, those six large properties today probably represent 15 or 16 properties, because as we build them back we build back in phases so you know we had an East Tampa site that was a hope six development finance by HUD.
It was a tax exempt bond deal and it was built back as three phases. One phase of which was a 9% in two phases were tax exempt bond debt with 4% tax credits.
And, and then other phases like on court Tampa, which is now four phases of mixed income housing only one of those phases is a 9% deal three of those phases are bond deals with 4% tax credits.
And then the other buildings are tax exempt bonds and 4% credits.
So a variety of financing and you know the capital stacks on some of these.
So we have a lot of different types of bonds.
Buildings are tax exempt bonds and 4% credits.
And it will really amaze you because they could reach easily 1213 sources of funding and our largest, most complex capital stack that we've assembled is 15 sources of funding to complete one development.
Can you walk us through one of your favorite projects that you've worked on over the past 25 years.
That could be a tough question to answer. Well, favorite project. Well, I'll just use on court because it's probably the most, the most recognizable by most people.
Uncle is a very special project and that it is our most sustainable project. We reach lead gold on individual buildings are in Tires.
Well, see the block neighborhood will be a lead code on the neighborhood development.
You know, category.
And, you know, so we're super proud of that.
It also has incredible state of the art architect or site infrastructure.
And we started with the site infrastructure was the opportunity just before the real estate downturn in 2006 2007 we had relocated this site.
And we started demolishing the property.
We knew from the offset we wanted this to be our most wanted the most sustainable communities in the city. So we intentionally wanted to reuse all the concrete from all those barracks style buildings that was demolished.
We used the stockpile all of the, you know, crushed, you know, concrete from that site reused it for the base material and all of the new network of roads on that property.
And the real estate market sort of tanked there we were sitting there with a site that had streets in place at already been cleared already been fully entitled for vertical development.
And so we had the world shovel ready site in the US at the time, and I was able to successfully compete for some federal funding in the stimulus rounds.
And we were able to make the economy receive the largest single award of neighborhood stabilization phase to funding in the country of $38 million, which allowed us to build back all that incredible infrastructure which includes not only, you know, great connected
streets, you know, but deploying low impact development standards so that, you know, the site itself percolates and, and does not just turn into a watershed to send water elsewhere.
We also built a stormwater retention vault 33,000 cubic foot storage capacity on, you know, a really small little site, think 13,000 square feet of land.
And that vault pretty much allowed us to contain all the rainwater that comes on that 12 city block site.
We built a shared underground and vault. We filter it and send it right back to each of the 12 lots for irrigation.
And we also built a state of the art chilled water facility on that site to provide air conditioning for all 12 city blocks.
This is just a chiller building receives makeup water from the, from that site. We tie in all the parcels, you know, condensation lines and we reuse all the condensation that's produced on that site.
We have solar panels that offset more than offset our entire street lighting grid for encore.
And it's an incredible site, we have a two acre urban farm, you know, we're doing urban farming in downtown town.
And this is not a community guard. This is a high production urban farm that's producing thousands and thousands of tons of cabbage lettuce and bananas.
And we have types of fresh produce organic produce. We harvest eggs on that site from chickens we harvest honey from to be hives that we have there.
And, you know, it's part of our effort toward ensuring that, you know, low income communities have access to fresh, you know, fresh food sources.
And we have a new desert. When we started the redevelopment is now got a grocery store under contract coming to the site.
So having that urban farm on this site allows us to reduce that, you know, that distance from seed to plate as they call it from where you plant, you know, your food to where you harvest it.
We don't have to transport it from why mama we don't have to transport it from California, you know, so the opportunity for restaurants and people who live in close proximity to literally walk across the street and purchase their fresh food and produce is, is just a, an opportunity that you don't see in other great cities.
So we're very proud of the Meacham Urban Farm and our partnership there that does that. So, and that's just the infrastructure. You know, that's not now talking about we can switch now to the residential units that are built on top.
We've got two buildings that are dedicated to low income housing for seniors elderly seniors, 160 unit L at encore 158 units read at encore.
We have two buildings that are dedicated to a mixed income housing for families 141 units at trio at encore 70% affordable 30% market rate and the 203 units at tempo at encore, which is also 70% affordable and 30% market rate.
And then we have two market rate buildings as well. 288 units at legacy at encore, all market rate and workforce and 288 units at Navarro at encore.
Also, for families market rate and workforce housing. So having that perfect blend of workforce market and affordable all on one site with more to come.
You know, is is the kind of community that I would love to live in and, and I think the people who live there truly enjoy the diversity of people and the diversity of uses that are on site.
Wow, that's amazing. Urban farm right you said that's downtown downtown urban farm.
Unbelievable. Yes, I recall one of the reasons developers love joint venture with housing authorities was the plethora of resources available to put into the deals, you know, from private based vouchers, home funds CDBG money.
This goes on and on.
I noticed some of those resources for housing authorities started drying up over time. How has Tampa fair in terms of just resources available to put into deals.
Yeah, yeah, really great question and you know so the resources at the federal government level has always been sporadic.
You know, changes with the winds of politics in Washington DC.
And that's just been the nature forever for funding for the public housing program in particular.
So, the Tampa housing authority was one of the first housing authorities in the country to sign on board to the rad program, the real assistance demonstration program, which allowed us to essentially freeze our subsidy on those public housing units at the level that was
funding at that time. But having a guarantee from the federal government that that would be the level of funding that we would get for the next 20 years.
Because previously, public housing funding could be 98% of what was appropriated one year and it could be 68% of what was appropriated the next year.
And it literally had that kind of volatility and funding. And when you can't depend on stable funding.
You know the property suffer the Kerber pill first suffers and then the, the environment for the residents who live there suffer greatly in terms of turn of work orders and keeping units occupied.
So that was a intentional choice of ours to get to a more stable subsidy stream for our public housing units and it has, you know, made all the difference for us.
We converted have now converted essentially all of our public housing to rental assistance demonstration.
We've got great levels of funding in place that is secured. And that grows as the, you know, the, as the, the rate of inflation continues to grow so we'll get a two or 3% you know inflation adjustment on top of our guarantee funding stream.
And that then allows us to go to commercial lenders and secure loans to redevelop and do major rehab on those properties when you know you've got a stable source of funding coming in.
And we've, we've systematically utilize that to that extent. So that's given us the stability in funding from the federal government that housing authorities that are not under direct program.
Don't enjoy today.
Before that we invested greatly in $1 million energy performance program. It's called the PC and performance contract where we essentially recognize the value in conserving water and electricity in our sites was huge.
So we essentially barred, you know, dollars to replace these water devices and electrical devices that was, you know, overly, you know, just, you know, not good conservative items to be in our housing and, you know, we lowered our utility use substantially,
which then allowed us to pay back that loan with the savings that we were generating from the utility reduction, the cost of utilities gone down.
So, so we've, we've always tried to deploy a smart business practices that the private sector utilizes in its operations and not solely rely on the federal government to, to be the, you know, all, all the funding that we need for affordable housing, and that served us well.
So just a follow up to that, I started off that question, referencing private developers and joint venturing. All of these projects that they've done. How many have you done yourself as the sole developer versus joint venturing, you know, I know Michael's been involved in some of your
projects.
And so, I think that was correct. Well, how often do you use the joint venture structure. Yeah, your projects done. Absolutely quite often, about half of that inventory that I've spoken about was done through partnerships with private sector developers.
So, essentially, all of our larger multi phase redevelopment with the exception of one site. We've always done in partnership with private developers so Michael's was our first developer partnership.
We did three phases of hope six development in East Tampa with them, which was 825 units, building heights of states.
And even not over 17 years ago now we're just now going through a year 15, you know, conversion of those sites where, you know, we're re capitalizing the sites with new debt and equity and doing some major rehabs to those sites.
And it's just incredible the partnership that we've had with Michael's in particular because it's, it's, it's very, very rare in this industry that you can say, 17 years later, the principles on both the private developer side and the public housing side are the same people.
So, you know, 17 years ago as we were, you know, doing this hope six project, both milked at was leading the operations for Michael's and many of their senior people are still in place.
I'm sure myself Jerome Rines, you know, the president CEO of Tampa Housing Authority here and myself, as a senior vice president, are both in the same seats here so the same parties that signed the original documents 17 years later signing the recent occasion documents, you just don't see that.
Certainly makes negotiations, trust in partners, you know, a lot better when you've got that kind of relation, you know, with partners.
We've, we've had other great partnerships with Bank of America, CDC, they are where our primary business partner on the young court at Tampa.
And we're in a great partnership now with related on the West River site, where we now deploy that in that partnership over eight buildings in the last six, seven years.
We have other partnerships with them in other parts of the city of Tampa as well. So probably our biggest single partnership is with related these days.
We have a new partnership that we're greatly looking forward to lots of synergy with PMG property market groups, PMG, affordable out of New York, who's our partner at Robles Park Village so we've really enjoyed, you know, some really great partnerships with private
developers. We typically approach these deals as a 50 50 partnership, where literally we have, you know, 50% equity stake 50% decision making, you know, in the general partnerships.
We enter into that partnership, we jointly contribute toward closing any funding gaps to get the project closed.
And we split developer fee 50 50 and then typically on the back end we exit that private partner, and we become the sole GP after conversion of permanent financing on all those years.
Do you have any type of specific programs for minority developers or contractors to get it.
Yeah, great great question again thanks for that as well so our relationship with related is a minority developer partner of ours and it's been really great, having as a prime developer.
You know, a minority developer.
We also have partnerships I'm thinking of the archway SPS partnership, which is a partnership between two developers, which includes a black female developer with SPS.
And they are I think a 30% member in that developer partnership.
And we're working with a number of minority developers in particular on a West River site that we're trying to get a couple of projects in the ground.
So we're always looking for the opportunity to help grow minority developers in particular.
Great success at growing and contributing to the growth of minority contractors on, you know, dating back 25 years now on many of our projects we've had major projects including uncle Tampa, for instance, which 28 million dollars in infrastructure that I spoke about.
That was all awarded to a minority on black minority on general contractor that literally started with us a decade earlier, doing 100,000 and $200,000 projects and roles to be able to do that 28 million dollar infrastructure project for us.
We've also had other major multi million dollar projects that's generated as high as 60 plus percent minority participation on the contractor side.
So growing that developer partnerships is something that we're very interested in and we're always looking for developers of color in particular that we can partnership with and do deals with the opportunity to exist.
That's kind of the theme we come across from our guests and you alluded to it for a minute is the importance of relationships networking just outside activities. Can you speak to the importance.
Those played for you.
Yeah, certainly, you know, professional relationships and this business, you know, get you to the table for sure.
Community groups and organizations and professional organizations and not just, you know, their role at the housing authority, but being out, having other organizations.
So, you know, we have staff that are actively involved with other nonprofits and, you know, going through leadership Tampa leadership Hillsborough programs that's intentional to build relationships relationships with private companies.
With utility companies with other governmental executives so that when we have a need we know who to call and and who to partner with, you know, to get good work done.
You know, our senior staff is all expected to serve in this community outside of their job at the Tampa housing authority.
I use myself in particular the current boards that I sit on that are very, very meaningful to me is habitat for humanity Hillsborough been on that board for six, seven years now.
We participate in home builds, myself as well as our president CEO, just completed the CEO build for habitat. A couple of weeks ago where we literally, you know, on site for a whole day, helping to build housing for, you know, income eligible persons in our
communities. I'm also on the board of Florida housing coalition I'm an officer on that board. I am the past chair of your life Tampa Bay.
I'm the current chair of the governance committee for your life. I am the current global governing trustee with your life on the international side.
And I'm also a member of the America's executive committee for your life.
But you know, other members of the housing authority are actively serving on CDC boards and, you know, land trust boards in the community community action agency boards and the like so public service outside of THA is very important.
And like I said, it actually builds those relationships it allows us to be in proximity with others in the community and we can bring better array of services to our clients to our residents by knowing people in these other areas and certainly from a business
partnership standpoint, has been very meaningful for us to be as involved as I am with you ally with Urban Land Institute not only the professional knowledge that I get, but the peer to peer exchange.
When you're literally able to sit with other very large, very student accomplished, you know, developers, you know, throughout the US and and abroad.
So those are very meaningful.
Your boards and representations to me I've been a member of your life for, I want to say 28 years now and attribute, you know, most of my professional growth and knowledge to the value that I get out of the year life experience.
We just came through coven and, you know, after that started summer down the rise in interest rates, slowed down the momentum for a lot of deals. How is the housing authority fair during the high interest rate, you know, environment or the increase interest rate environment that we're in and that coming through coven.
Yeah, it certainly impacted us probably more so than than other industries, certainly on the market rate and luxury side, you know, we don't have the ability to increase our rents, you know, to cover that increase in costs, costs of capital in particular.
So what what we have to do is get more and more creative.
We do that by, you know, do partnerships by leveraging and frankly by putting some of our own equity more and more of our own equity into deals to close gaps.
You know, so, so that's how we've done it when I said to you earlier, you know, we've had projects as complex as 15 layers of source of funding.
So that's, you know, as the interest rates increase now insurance on the back end on the operating side, insurance is really hurting a lot of our sites from an operational standpoint.
So, being able to be creative and look to and secure funding from the city from the county from, you know, the state, you know, taking advantage of brownfield credits, take advantage of, you know, for my housing program funding through the federal
home loan banks, federal home loan bank of San Francisco in particular is, you know, so that we go to quite often for their HP program to help, you know, you'll complete the capital stack on many of our projects.
And then at the end of the day, there's still, you know, two $3 million worth of gap that just can't be closed.
So, because of entrepreneurial business opportunities at the Tampa Housing Authority has been engaged in in the last 20 years, doing the statewide contract in particular,
collecting developer fees on our partnership deals. We are able to plug gaps ourselves.
So, at the end of the day, we're still getting the work done very needed work done, even though interest rates are making it more and more difficult for us.
You know, it's just another source in the capital stack for us at the end of the day.
Wow, you're in a great great great situation if you could put your own equity in the closed gaps that that is a good good situation to be in.
Going forward, I know you guys still have a lot of stuff in your pipeline.
But for the benefit of our listeners who are folks looking to get in the industry and some emerging developers, what piece of advice would you want to share with them, you know, based on your own extraordinary career.
Well, first of all, to, you know, look at housing authorities as a potential partner.
And realize that there is a, you know, a sort of, you know, public process that that will entail and require.
But, you know, understand that it's a great way to begin for new developers in my opinion.
Because, you know, you have the potential of partnering with a institution in your community in the form of a housing authority that typically, you know, has a wealth of land, right, land that can be used creatively in a partnership.
You know, units built and delivered to the market.
We don't always have to sell our land in order to have it be used for housing we can, you know, you know, create member loans that are soft debt on the unit that's paid on the back end out of cash flow, or that's deferred for the life of the project until
the next generation. So, housing authorities are usually land rich.
Housing authorities also have access to sources that, you know, other other parties can't necessarily access if it's public housing, there's capital fund dollars that comes from hood every year.
There are major grants that are available every year in the form of choice neighborhood grants.
There's a lot of other grant programs through economic development administration, Department of Commerce Department of HHS, and others that can be tapped by housing authorities dependent on the type of nature project that you're building.
So, you know, realizing the bad part with the housing authority and the, the opportunities that exist there also housing authorities have certain enabling characteristics, you know, granted from the state government.
Housing authorities can, you know, conduct imminent domain proceedings and takings.
And when that need exists, housing authorities can issue bond debt, government purpose bonds.
So how some housing authorities are issues some housing authorities are rated issues of bond debt. So those are all, you know, and housing authorities, you know, one of the bigger areas that you can partner with the housing authority.
One section eight side, one just be a section eight landlord, where your property now can, you know, attract a tenant based section eight voucher holder, which in most communities now are paying very good rent.
And some housing authorities are able to go to what's called the small area fair market rent, where it's zip code by zip code. So it's not the, the MSA, you know, one rent for the whole MSA but it's zip code by zip code so if you're in a zip code that has high prices, you know, the rent rate is higher in those zip codes.
Housing authorities have the ability to go to 110% of fair market rate.
So there's just a lot of opportunities with housing authorities on the section a side also, you have the ability to get project based section eight assistance in partnership with the housing authority.
So in Tampa in particular we're always looking for landlords or developers that is willing to make some of their units available to special needs populations.
There could be veterans that could be youth aging out of foster care that could be seniors, disabled populations, you know, a variety of, you know, needs that exist.
There are a lot of vouchers that we can project based to your development, where you then can, you know, have that assurance of that monthly revenue coming in every month on time, and a good, a good month, a good rate of rent at that if indeed the housing
authority is, you know, keeping current with its, you know, written reason but this calculations.
Where do you see Tampa in the next five or 10 years. Yeah, certainly continue to grow to grow. You know, the immigration numbers in Tampa, in particular, are really great and it's going to continue to support more and more residential growth.
But I think we are on the right path to invest in diverse communities, communities that have a diversity of people, both income wise as well as diversity of uses.
In the next five years also you will see Tampa finally get its act right in terms of attracting and deploying more modern mass transit to connect to connect our populations.
We've been building intentionally building to, you know, you know, densities that would support mass transit nodes, both in our downtown core and the West Tampa and East Tampa and all the way up to the university.
And, and that opportunity exists now to deploy some light rail systems in the city. And we've worked for a long, long time to try to get that. I'm hopeful in the next five years you'll see that I'm almost certain in the next five years you will see the high speed connection into Tampa.
We've already connected Tampa to Orlando and all the way down to Miami. The first high speed rail, you know, project in the state of Florida is already from Miami through Orlando and they've already announced the next stop is in Tampa, and the site in
Tampa is literally steps away from our all core development so you know having that that public transportation mode is going to hopefully reduce some of our families dependency on that second automobile and family, which is a huge extra cost.
So we try to make sure that our families can not only live affordably from a rent paying standpoint, but that they're also close to jobs. So they are less dependent on getting in that vehicle and driving.
And if now they can actually have statewide connectivity.
That's not 100% dependent on a personal automobile. It just allows them to, you know, reduce their family budget substantially more. Excellent. Looking at your career, if you were able to do it all over again.
Is there anything at all you would do differently?
Wow, Steven, that's has a question that I could probably sit here and be quiet for five minutes while I think.
If that's not what you want, you know, I'm very pleased with all of the choices I've made to get to where I'm at today in my career.
I think I'm exactly where I need to be. I think, you know, this has been a divine appointment as how I felt a lot of times that, you know, when we made decisions that, you know,
you know, we weren't quite sure about, you know, divine intervention turned it into the right decision at the end of the day. So, you know, I feel blessed to be exactly where I'm at here.
I wouldn't change any step in my path to get to where I'm at.
Well, great. Well, that'll wrap us up with another episode of the real estate shop. Leroy, thanks for coming by and we look forward to staying in touch with you.
My pleasure. Thank you.
I'm going to date the shop and contact the kid to get anywhere else.