A ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday welcomed 16 new affordable workforce housing units to University Row Apartments on North Tamiami Trail just north of the Sarasota County line. Waiting lists ensured the apartments were filled even before they were move-in ready.

“The need for affordable housing is at a fever pitch,” says Manatee County commissioner Mike Rahn, who was in attendance and represents the district where the multifamily apartments are located.

“Service workers, nurses, waiters, waitresses—they need a place to live too,” says Mark Vengroff, managing partner of One Stop Housing, the Sarasota-based, for-profit company that spearheaded the project when it bought the former Ramada Inn property in 2007.

Christina Maser and her teen daughter were among the tenants who moved into one of the new units. Previously, the single mom was forced out of a single-family home she was renting, where. Like so many others across the region, she was priced out by her landlord and a rental market that exploded following the pandemic.

“The landlord jacked the rent by $1,000 over a couple of years, and that amount just wasn’t going to work," Maser says. "Other two-bedroom units I looked at were at least $1,800 a month. Just to qualify, you have to [earn] three times your rent. As a single mom and bartender and I couldn’t make that.”

University Row Apartments is comprised of 100 studios and one-bedroom apartments within walking distance of the University of South Florida's Sarasota campus and New College of Florida, and just one mile away from the Ringling College of Art and Design. 

It's part of the Vengroff legacy started by Mark’s father, the late Harvey Vengroff, which converts old buildings like motels, offices and schools into much-needed affordable housing. Its projects do not benefit from federal, state or local government affordability programs.

Rents are 60 to 70 percent of the area's median income—for one person, that's an annual income of $36,000 to $42,350; for a family of three, it's $46,620 a year to $54,390. New units are $975 a month each, utilities included, and existing studios are $825 and utilities are also included. To qualify, all you need is a job. One Stop Housing's other projects are priced similarly.

Harvey Vengroff founded Vengroff, Williams and Associates in 1963, which grew into the world's largest commercial collections agency, handling $32 billion in volume a year. Vengroff was also known for battling with city and county officials over zoning regulations that often got in the way of his affordable housing goals. He asked his son to take over managing the properties in 2018. 

Today, One Stop Housing has projects in Bradenton, Kissimmee, Orlando, Sarasota and Memphis, Tennessee, with plans for 600 new units in Sarasota and Manatee within the next two years. That's not including Eagle Rock, a new, first-of-its-kind, employee-subsidized affordable housing community firming up in Manatee County, with hopes for replication in Sarasota.