Tampa Bay households "doubling up" as housing need grows

We now have yet another metric showing the need for more housing, especially affordable, in Tampa Bay and across the country.

Driving the news: A new report from Zillow quantified housing need by the number of individuals or families "doubling up," or living with non-relatives in homes they neither own nor rent.

• The report assumes that those people would live on their own if they had other options but acknowledged that's not always the case.
• Similarly, not all family members who live together would continue that arrangement if they had other options.

By the numbers: Tampa had an average of about 1.6 "doubled up" families per unit with a deficit of 28,000 units.

• Lakeland's rate was a bit higher, at 1.9 families per unit but a deficit of 7,000.
• By comparison, denser cities like Los Angeles and Boston had rates of 4 and 5.7, respectively.

Zoom out: Across the country, those individuals or families who doubled up totaled about 8 million in 2021, the report said. That's compared with just 3.7 million housing units available for rent or sale, making for a deficit of 4.3 million.

• Two-thirds of those individuals or families had an income of $35,000 or less.