A new report ranked the Orlando area as one of the nation’s worst places to find affordable housing — yet again.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition runs an annual count of the shortage of affordable and available homes across 50 of the top metropolitan areas in the U.S. The group’s 2025 Gap Report ranked the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area in sixth place, a slight drop from its former fourth spot the previous year.
The study found that for every 100 extremely low-income renters, Orlando MSA can only offer 19 affordable units — a gap of 81 homes.
A local development group, Wendover Housing Partners, has been building value-driven communities across the southeastern U.S. for about 30 years, and COO Ryan Von Weller said these Gap Report numbers confirm what he and his group see every day in Central Florida.
"Orlando continues to be one of the hardest places in the country for extremely low-income renters to find a place to live. While we’ve seen some progress," he said, "the need is still high. Too many families are being priced out of the communities they serve."
The issue is “systemic” and complicated
Central Florida’s largest metro is not alone. According to NLIHC, the “systemic shortage” affects every single state. In total, the U.S. lacks about 7.1 million affordable homes, with only 35 units for every 100 renters who need this type of housing.
“As a result of this shortage, three-quarters of renters with extremely low incomes are severely cost-burdened, spending more than half of their income on rent,” the Coalition’s statement said. “Even states with the least severe shortages face significant shortfalls.”
The report found that extremely low-income renters are the most affected by this shortage. These are people who make less than 30% of their area’s median income amount. Other groups include caregivers, working single parents, older adults or seniors, as well as people with disabilities and on fixed incomes, and people of Black and Hispanic descent.
The Orlando MSA was already facing a strained housing supply, before an unprecedented shift in population growth hit the area post-pandemic. Over the last six years, the influx of people settling into the region has nearly doubled.
From 2018-2021, around 123,000 people moved into the area, according to the U.S. Census data. But in the following three years, the Orlando MSA welcomed another 240,000 residents. This has challenged a lagging affordable housing industry that’s still stabilizing after a COVID-era halt in production.
Studies from the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida have found that a lack of safe, suitable, affordable housing alternatives are directly tied to evictions and homelessness.
According to Von Weller, making a dent is possible, but it requires investments from all sectors.
"To move the needle, we must continue forging partnerships between private developers, employers and local governments to make use of underutilized land for housing," he said.
This is how Wendover got started on Catchlight Crossings, an affordable housing project under construction near International Drive. But Von Weller said it took the combined powers of his company, Universal Studios, and Orange County to make that happen.
"These partnerships help develop affordable communities," he said, "that truly make a difference in people’s lives."
A new, creative way to build homes faster
Some builders like Mark Vengroff, CEO of One Stop Housing, have said that Orlando Metro could catch up if it invests in a faster, cheaper, and more sustainable model. His for-profit workforce housing development company has built homes across Florida and Tennessee, with another 1,100 currently under construction.
Vengroff said he can’t make them fast enough.
“We have about 200 people on our waiting list for each of our properties. We receive about 120 phone calls a day from prospective tenants that are looking, that are just desperate to find anything that's affordable,” he said. “Many are living in and out of hotels or apartments that are $1,200 to $1,400 a month just for a renovated hotel room with a hot plate and mini fridge.”
According to Vengroff, state and local government housing programs, like tax credits and incentives, can get lengthy and messy. His business model of a “one-stop shop” services the process, from start to finish, in-house, and with a focus on adaptive reuse projects. This, he said, allows the company to build more sustainable housing, more quickly, and for a lot less — without the need for government funding.
“Only maybe 10% of our apartments have any type of subsidy,” Vengroff said. “We do it all, so we're able to streamline the process and keep a very similar footprint on all of our development.” Building without subsidies means no income restrictions on tenants. Vengroff said this helps him fill the housing gap for renters of all income levels. Unlike traditional affordable housing, where financial progress, like getting a raise or saving enough to buy a house, can disqualify a renter from holding residence.
While he admits that this model doesn’t yield the same profit margins that market rate housing does, he said it yields a quality of life that people can afford while still building up their wealth and breaking out of the poverty cycle.
“We basically took greed out of the equation,” Vengroff said. “It's rewarding to watch. Our tenants take a lot of pride in it.”
But housing needs community support
Out-of-the-box approaches like these and a desire to uplift disadvantaged communities is precisely what Orlando Metro needs, said Eric Grimmer, Orlando’s local chapter lead for a pro-housing group called YIMBY, which stands for “Yes, In My Backyard.”
Affordable housing projects need planning to make financial, environmental and social sense, but Grimmer said the biggest problem is the lack of community support.
“Everyone says they’re for affordable housing until a proposal comes up to build in people’s neighborhoods, and that's where you see a backlash,” he said. “It's hard enough to build any type of housing in Orange County without some sort of outcry. Even harder to build multi-family housing, harder still to build income-restricted affordable housing.”
Grimmer is passionate about housing and believes thousands of people living with housing insecurity is unacceptable. He said in order to change minds and get people on board, the community needs to be educated.
“We need to combat the myths and false narratives that go with affordable housing, homeless shelters, or even multi-family housing, such as increased crime or lower property values. These things are just not supported by objective data. So, we share the information, we try to educate, and hopefully persuade them,” Grimmer said.
The Gap Report said that Florida has 557,415 extremely low-income renter households. For every 100 of them, the state can only offer 26 affordable, available units. This leaves 82% of this population severely cost-burdened, living in places they cannot afford.
Lillian Hernández Caraballo is a Report for America corps member.
