{"id":429888,"date":"2026-10-16T21:49:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T21:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/429888\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T21:49:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T21:49:39","slug":"habitat-breaks-ground-on-26-townhome-affordable-housing-community-in-lealman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/429888\/","title":{"rendered":"Habitat breaks ground on 26-townhome affordable housing community in Lealman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">To keep cost low for homeowners, the property will be placed in a community land trust. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Under that structure, the land remains owned by the trust and is leased to homeowners through a 99-year renewable ground lease. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">This approach ensures long-term affordability, even as homes change hands over time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The county is contributing about $2.29 million toward the approximately $10 million project, including $1.8 million in Penny for Pinellas funding for vertical construction and $465,000 through the Lealman Community Redevelopment Area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Pinellas County Commissioner Renee Flowers said projects like this are critical to \u201cmaking sure that we have enough teachers that live in our community and work in our community,\u201d as well as police officers, firefighters, and EMTs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Habitat has completed more than 100 homes in Lealman over the years, including its 1,000th Tampa Bay-area home nearby. Sutton said the nonprofit has completed nearly 40 homes on the surrounding blocks, allowing more families to remain in the community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">As with all Habitat projects, the homes will be reserved for buyers earning between 30% and 80% of the area median income. Prospective homeowners must complete 38 homebuyer education classes and contribute between 350 and 450 \u201csweat equity\u201d hours working on Habitat homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To keep cost low for homeowners, the property will be placed in a community land trust. Under that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-429888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}