St. Pete Mayor Ken Welch marks 100 days in office, focuses on affordable housing
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St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch just reached his first 100 days in office. He’s focused on the future in the growing city including tackling the most pressing issue: A lack of affordable housing. Mayor Welch told ABC Action News he is proud of what his administration has accomplished so far but believes more needs to be done to address the growing problem. “We are focusing on increasing inventory.
The projects coming in are great, but they are in the hundreds of units, we need much more than that and that will be the focus of our administration for the foreseeable future,” he added. Aaron Dietrich, a member of the People’s Council of St. Petersburg and advocate for affordable housing agrees. “I’m very encouraged to see Mayor Ken Welch is the one at the helm right now because I think he gets it better than most. Yet, what I have to say from personal experience sleeping on a friend’s couch right now and for my friends and family struggling to find housing, it needs to be more and it needs to be faster and I’m hopeful he can get us there,” Dietrich said.
The People’s Council of St. Petersburg plans to meet with Welch to discuss solutions on Wednesday, April 20th. Welch also talked about his ongoing priorities including combatting sea level rise, transportation, his work on the redevelopment of Tropicana Field, attracting high-wage jobs, investing in youth programming, approving a $15 minimum wage for city employees, combatting structural racism and disparities and working to keep the Tampa Bay Rays in St. Petersburg. Welch and his administration listed off some of the key programs they have tackled to deal with affordable housing so far including: **Down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers**: In early February, Mayor Welch signed off on a policy change increasing the amount of down payment assistance available to first-time homebuyers to $60,000.
The city also expanded its loan forgiveness policy for the assistance, allowing full-forgiveness to those earning at or below 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) after 10-years of continued occupancy in the home. For those earning above 80% AMI, full repayment was previously required.