Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Lucinda has a question about the Tampa Bay area job market, so she contacted us through the old Ask-a-Tampan gimmick.

Hi everyone,

My fiancee and I are moving to Tampa in Early May of this year. He currently works at John Hancock in Boston, and I am a paralegal. We make roughly 35-40k a year individually. Based on prior posts I understand that the pay in Tampa is pretty low. When I look at job-postings on websites like craigslist.com and other sites though, the pay seems comparable to what we are making here, so I’m unsure what ti expect. I was also wondering if the job market has picked up at all? I know that here, a lot of places have a ” hiring freeze” in effect due to the economy. I was wondering if that was the case there also. We are planning to apply to jobs from here and possibly fly down for some interviews but I’m afraid employers will be reluctant to call us back since we are still living in Mass. Since so many people move down to Florida from up here though, I was wondering if employers are more open to hiring out of state people who are relocating. Any thoughts? Comments? I just want to get an idea of what to expect.

First of all, congratulations on your engagement! And second of all, congratulations on making the decision to head to Tampa Bay for this next part of your life.

At this time, governments have a hiring freeze in effect, but that is not necessarily the case with business. Forty percent of businesses expect to hire more people this year (down from 56% last year). Locals feel as if things are just sorta ok.

As far as the 351 area code on your resume, I would assume that many Florida businesses are used to getting job applicants from out-of-state. After all, everyone wants to live here sooner or later! But for others with real live experience in this matter, we’ll have to rely on the incomparable sticks readers - they often leave helpful anecdotal evidence in the comments.

One caution to you though - compared to the Northeast, Florida is laid back and (some would say) s.l.o.w. I beg you not to come down here just to complain that they do things so much better up North. We really don’t care much for that sort of attitude.

Also, I see your husband is at John Hancock. We’re not particularly endeared to insurance companies here lately. Although they are a necessary evil.

I hope this is somewhat helpful, and I encourage you to check back for more comments - folks ’round here are pretty good at helping out…

According to an AOL article written by Carol Vinzant, Clearwater City, Florida is one of the Worst Places to Retire:

Clearwater City, Florida: Too Many Fellow Seniors

This Tampa Bay area hamlet has the highest percentage of seniors of any city in the United States. The 2000 Census found 21% of Clearwater’s population was 65 or older, the highest of any city of 100,000 or more. Floridians as a whole are 17.6% seniors, compared with 12.4% for the United Sates as a whole. With 3.6% of its population 85 and up, Clearwater also has three times the national share of that age group.

The graying of Florida is just one reason many retirees from the Northeast sometimes abandon their first retirement destination for somewhere mid-way up the coast. These “half-backs” are increasingly turning to the Carolinas, fleeing the bland culture, extreme weather, and high real estate and homeowner’s insurance prices of Florida.

Huh?

Clearwater City? There is no such place as Clearwater City, Florida.

Too Many Seniors? For people retiring? Don’t old people sometimes look for other old people to hang with? I have never in my life heard a retiree say there are too many old people here. Even still, 21% is not a very high number. That still leaves 79% of the population to make friends with. Is that not enough?

But get this - Anchorage, Alaska also makes the list, because they have the “Fewest Fellow Seniors.” Rhode Island makes the list because they have the “Least Older Men.” Perhaps Carol can tell us what perfect percentage of retirees we should be striving to reach.

And they are fleeing the “bland culture” of Clearwater? I guess the writer didn’t read an earlier article, also found on AOL. The one that says Tampa Bay is one of the best places for retirees:

This is Florida’s finest venue to kick start a second or third act. The community actively welcomes retirees who want to get involved with creative, ecological, business — you name it — projects. The cultural scene is rich with performing arts venues, and it has outstanding healthcare facilities.

Sounds like the opposite of bland to me.

The bottom of the article tells us that Carol Vinzant is a freelance writer in New York City. The rest of the article tells me that some people can get paid to write crap.

For those of you who think growth can just be completely stopped, think about this.

Imagine a January Monday “up there” somewhere - you wake up early, pile on a bunch of clothes, put a parka on over that, and go start the car. Then you grab your snow shovel, create a path for the car, and consider scraping the ice off the windshield. Deciding to let the car heater dissolve the ice instead, you head back inside for a cup of cocoa and flip on the TV, where Al Roker is telling you about the clear, bright, cool day in Tampa, with a high of 70.

And you think about BREAKING THE LAW:

(Toledo, OH)

521.01. Removal of snow and ice from walks.

(a) The occupants of each single residential, commercial or industrial property and the owner of any multiple residential, commercial or industrial property or of any unoccupied or unimproved property, abutting upon public walks shall clear the walk of snow, ice, dirt, or any other debris within twenty-four hours after such deposit.

(1952 Code § 7-4-29)

(b) Whoever violates this section is guilty of a minor misdemeanor.

You think about DEATH:

…he passed away today, suffering a critical heart attack while shoveling snow in his driveway.

The Great State of Florida is among the most wonderful locations in the world. The miles of beaches and wintertime weather here have drawn people to visit the area for over a hundred years. Along the way, hoteliers, roadside attractions, and other entrepreneurs have made the place even more enticing, giving the impression to the rest of the world that the entire state is just a big playground. How many of your out-of-state friends wonder if you just hang out at the beach on the days you don’t go to Disney World?

So when those pasty folks up north begin to contemplate a change, it should be no surprise that the SUNSHINE STATE almost always makes the short list of places to go.

Florida’s population increases by more than 1,000 people every day. Natural increase (births minus deaths) account for less than 13% of Florida’s population increase from 1970 to 2000. So net migration (people moving in minus people moving out) is about 872 each day.

But at the very least, sixty-two of those moving here find their way to Hillsborough County. The average household size is around 2.5, so those 62 people are gonna need about 25 households. EVERY DAY. That’s over 9,000 households a year. Traditionally, about half of those are gonna be single family detached homes, so we’re looking at building more than 350 houses a month in Hillsborough County.

So the question is not whether we “want” growth, the question is where do we want to direct our inevitable new neighbors?

Tommy wrote last year about how Forbes ranked Tampa-St. Pete #35 (of 40) on their list of “best cities to be single.”

The most important factor in this list is the number of singles, or percentage of people 15 or older and never married. Only Las Vegas has fewer than us.

Forbes’ 2007 ratings are here, and there’s great news: we’ve improved to #32 (of 40)! This is despite us moving to dead last in number of singles (only 27% of us are unmarried) and 35th in cost of living. The new report is on the tails of our recent ranking as worst on their list of best cities for young professionals.

The city ranks 32nd for young professional concentration, last for its never-married population, second-to-last for big and small businesses and, to top it all off, has a high cost of living for what a recent grad can expect to earn.

Well that’s not very nice. Clearly Forbes never took my mother’s advice about keeping quiet if you don’t have any constructive criticism. The only categories where Tampa-St. Pete scored above average on the “Best for singles” rankings were “coolness” and “job growth.”

We didn’t even break the top 20 in drunkenness!

Does anyone care? Or are the residents just happy to lose our fantastic museums and theatre groups and charities, the sorts of things that are backed by young, energetic people? Is Tampa-St. Pete the next Boca Raton?

What’s the statute of limitations on claiming you’re “new in town”? This past weekend marked a year since I moved to Pinellas from New Tampa, and yet I’m still using the “new in town” trick to explain why I don’t really know anyone on this side of the bay. I made my core group of friends in New Tampa less than a week after moving to Florida; why, then, have I had such a struggle with building a similar social life here in Pinellas?

We ethnographers often use studies in contrasts to better understand the culture we’re observing. By looking at oxymorons or anachronisms we can get to what’s really happening. With that in mind, I headed Friday to Dunedin’s Martini Club to watch my favorite local band, Basic Rock Outfit. Having been juiced by their great performance at the LA Hangout on Thursday night (covered on my own blog) I was excited to see them again, and at a place practically down the street compared to all the way over in Lutz.

The fact I like BRO is itself a contradiction; I’m usually not into the heavier rock styles, but these guys really melt your face off and have some beautiful songs. They’re going to hit it big, and they play shows five nights a week all over the Bay area, so I encourage you to check them out. Dunedin’s Martini Club is across the street from Knology Park, on the currently-under-construction Douglas Ave. Douglas Avenue has been a wreck for months, and I’m told they won’t be able to pave it until a full day comes along without rain, which in August is unlikely, and it was probably not the best idea to execute a street repaving in the summer, but that’s Pinellas County for you.

You might think, given its name, that Martini Club would be a high-class, ritzy place, like Blue Martini or Martini Bar. It is not. I don’t mean that in any negative manner, seriously. Martini Club is more of a “roadhouse” feel, dirty and smoky and filled with trucker-capped mulleted locals, drinking $1.50 PBRs. BRO was up to their usual rockingness, and during their first break I struck up a few conversations, as I usually do in places where I don’t know anyone.

A balding man in a grey tank top and missing a few teeth asked me what I did.

“I teach,” I answered.

“What do you teach?”

“Persuasion.”

“Well how can I persuade you to get outta my f*ckin’ face?”

I felt like I’d fallen into some kind of comedic trap. Yet this is the kind of response I’ve gotten everywhere in Pinellas, be it the bookstore, supermarket, or St. Pete Beach cabana bar. I’m not sure what the hangup is, but it’s some insight into the barriers I’ve found on this side of the bay. (I should note that the Martini Club bartenders were fantastic and the friendliest people in the bar.)

It was nice, though, to see how well people took to the band; most of the bar’s patrons had never heard of Basic Rock Outfit, and I saw several purchasing CDs as the bar was closing (at the odd time of 1:30) which made me happy, though three hours of mingling hadn’t resulted in a single conversation of more than a minute or so. I’ve often compared Hillsborough to Pinellas with a drug reference: “Tampa is to St. Pete as coke is to weed.” After a year of living on this side, I’m not sure the analogy works anymore.

Maybe I’ll figure it out eventually. After all, I’m new in town.

Found in the St. Pete Times: The online edition of Forbes magazine, with help from business prognosticator Moody’s Economy.com, touts the Tampa Bay area as the No. 1 place in the country to buy a house. From the Forbes article (I bolded):

Tampa is a perfect candidate for a V-shaped recovery, according to research from Moody’s Economy.com… The local economy remains strong, and subprime lending is relatively low. Tampa’s problem? A high investor share that lead to high vacancy rates. When the market turned sour in 2005, more than 25% of Tampa homes were owned as investment properties. Investors are quicker to flee during a downturn, thus creating a glut of available housing stock. In Tampa’s case, vacancy rates now stand at 3.5%.

“As investors exit, the market revives,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at West Chester, Pa.-based research firm Moody’s Economy.com, as fewer speculative buyers results in a more stable market. “Tampa’s a pretty affordable market and first-time buyers can come in once prices fall.”

Based on Moody’s Economy projections, Tampa should burn off its excess inventory and hit a price trough in the first quarter of 2008, at which point prices are expected to increase by 10.6% the following year.

So go buy a house, huh? I mean, assuming you can afford the insurance and property taxes, that is…

Danger! Danger!

Florida’s economy is on the brink of recession:

“Florida is the epicenter for all the problems that exist in the housing industry,” said Lewis Goodkin, president of Goodkin Consulting Corp. and a property adviser in Miami for the past 30 years, who also foresees a recession. “”The problems we have now are unprecedented and a lot of people will get burnt.”

If the housing glut isn’t going to kill us, the new municipal taxes will:

The fee increases threaten to erase some or all of the initial savings in property taxes, which lawmakers put at $174 for the average homeowner this year.

I tend to worry — a lot — but I wasn’t thinking about any of these things as I slept at noon on Saturday, dreaming of waking up to see a foot of fluffy white snow outside my window. Instead, I woke to the sound of a fist on my door, a fist connected to the body connected to the scowling face of my landlord. Actually, he wasn’t scowling, but I sleep with my contacts in and things tend to look upside down in the moments after I awake.

My landlord, who also goes by the name of “my roommate’s dad,” invited me to renew my lease in the house where I live in Countryside. There were, of course, some consequences:

1. My rent is going up $100 a month.
2. My roommate’s boyfriend is also living with us now.

Only in Florida does adding a roommate increase your rent. To his credit, I understand why my rent has to increase. He was taking a huge loss on the mortgage with my only paying $500 a month on this very nice three-bedroom house in north Clearwater. Yet in the volatile housing market, there’s a big difference between $500 and $600 a month, especially when your annual income is only $10,000 before taxes (as mine is). Throw in the long commute I’m currently suffering and I have to seriously consider moving to Tampa. Can I find housing equal to where I’m living now for less than $600 a month in Hillsborough? Here in Countryside I have a garage, a nice kitchen with new appliances, a backyard, a giant palm tree, a quiet neighborhood, and a roommate whom I’m sure will never return my affections, especially considering that her boyfriend lives with us now.

This isn’t a “find Tim a new place to live” post, because I’m pretty sure I’m just going to absorb the rent increase by switching from Boddington’s to Michelob Light at my new favorite bar, Mike & Lisa’s Cricketers. It’s more intended to get a reaction from you about what real-world impacts property tax (etc) increases have on people. If we’re headed toward recession, and it’s getting obscenely expensive to live here, who’s going to move here but wealthy retirees? How will USF survive without graduate assistants (all of whom chose other universities where it was cheaper to live) to teach 60% of classes? How will Tampa survive when its artists and actors and musicians and comics leave town because the income isn’t meeting the expenses?

Danger. Danger.

The Census Bureau released 2006 population estimates for cities. Tampa added 7,088 people to the city from 2005 to 2006. That’s a net gain of just under 19 and a half people moving into Tampa city limits every single day. I hope they all read Sticks of Fire.

Tampa had the 7th highest gain in the state of Florida. Orlando gained 6,936 (9th highest in Florida), Clearwater lost 788 (3rd largest loss in the state), Sarasota lost 537 (8th largest), and St. Petersburg lost 267.