South St. Pete, long a hotbed of financially impoverished households, has been experiencing extensive growing pains under the significant waves of recent gentrification. Many within this predominantly minority-centric neighborhood embody a fundamental aspect of the urban Florida landscape: financial inequality with an air of systemic oppression, and a high degree of pressure from wealthier demographics to cede control over to more financially privileged Americans.
Finances and living affordability have long been the biggest stressors for many working-class Americans. For some residents of St. Petersburg, income flow through the average household is sporadic at times, and often not enough to make ends meet. This situation is all the more volatile for single parent households, and those living below the poverty gap, as many in south St. Pete are.
The issues facing these families are often worsened by lack of generational wealth, bigotry against minorities, and being forced to live paycheck to paycheck, thus being unable to build a proverbial safety net that many wealthier Americans take for granted.
Tammy Valltos, pictured below, has never had an easy life. This 50-year-old single mother of two has faced the wrath of systemic inequality for most of her corporal life. Single mothers being the heads of their household is a reality many in south St. Pete would be akin to. Having her son, 25, and daughter, 10, living under her roof, she faces a bevy of financial obligations on her shoulders as the main source of income for her family.
Living in her current home which she owns, Tammy has been a resident of South St. Pete for many years. The home buying process was an ordeal, she says, and her family’s housing history before residing in her current home was fraught with a high stress environment and a lack of financial stability. Rarely having home stability, Tammy experienced a series of challenges revolving around her family’s struggle to find affordable and stable housing.
A conflict resulting from the death of her daughter’s father gave way to a concerning living situation as they moved in to the home of her late partner. Steep water and electrical bills caused much tension, and pipe issues resulting in a water bill in that home costing $8,000, and an electric bill totaling in the thousands. The home was split ownership between Tammy’s daughter and her father’s sister, but tensions between the sister and Tammy’s family made the living situation in that home untenable, and thus shorter of term. Discrimination against her family made the situation work against her favor, causing her to leap with her daughter in to the renting and home buying market.
A home owner in her 30s, the cost of her home was $40,000 when she bought it. Several years later, roughly 20 years ago, she sold it for $82,000, marking the beginning of what many in the greater Tampa Bay region have seen involving cost of living raising exponentially over the last 30 sum-odd-years.
Being a homeowner has brought Tammy a great deal of pride, but issues with banks have caused a large degree of stress on her conscience. Her current mortgage company wrongfully claimed she had not paid two of her house payments, despite a paper trail proving she had been a reliable mortgage payer. According to Tammy, these issues seemed to have been related to discrimination due to her family’s constitution and the neighborhood she was residing in. These issues are prevalent for many who are lucky enough to own their homes in predominantly impoverished neighborhoods, and systemic inequality creates many conflicts that wealthier Americans rarely have to go through.
A huge struggle for many households like this is the reality of not making enough money month to month, and having to take on debt to pay the bills that will still be there even when the money is not.
Some economists have stated the idea that being impoverished is inherently expensive. Being unable to buy in bulk causes large grocery bills, bills that have been seen to grow exponentially as recent inflation increases nationwide. Being unable to buy nicer clothes and possessions causes them to break or ware down much more easily, and the existence of overdraft fees and late charges forces already financially challenged Americans to become more impoverished because of systemic oppression of wages for the average working-class person.
Gentrification is also very prevalent in her traditionally black community, forcing many lower income families to sell their homes for less than it should be worth to make way for wealthier property owners to develop poorer neighborhoods. This has been seen extensively in south St. Pete, as well as much of inland Central Avenue. Even the I 275 highway and Tropicana Field were built over repossessed predominantly poorer black communities.
Tammy has seen many homes in her neighborhoods being torn down to make way for significantly larger homes. Many of these houses, as Tammy has attested to, were not bought for enough to help said families find new housing in their price range, as many in her neighborhood have expressed concerns over.
Tammy is a long-term hair dresser, and we will discuss her career more in a subsequent article. These styles of jobs end up having at times sporadic incomes, and much of her monthly stress relates to finances. The Covid-19 pandemic affected her income significantly, forcing her to cut hair at homes privately because of the lockdown seen state-wide, requiring her to temporarily close her local small business.
These struggles are by no means unique, and many living in St. Petersburg have similar struggles that they have had to face relating to systemic wealth inequality, which most prevalently affects minority and lower income communities. What the future holds is uncertain for many families such as Tammy’s, and this uncertainty has become uncomfortably daunting for many who worry about being priced out of their neighborhoods as housing affordability plummets and the cost of living rises.
Saint Petersburg Forum For Rent Affordability 
Well written.
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