Featured Post from University of Florida

Florida renters struggle with housing costs, new statewide report finds

Feb 26, 2026

3 min

Nearly 905,000 low-income renter households in Florida are struggling to afford their housing costs, according to the 2025 Statewide Rental Market Study, released by the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies.

Prepared for Florida Housing Finance Corporation, the report provides a comprehensive look at the state’s rental housing conditions and is used to guide funding decisions for Florida Housing’s multifamily programs, including the State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL) program.

“Florida’s strong population growth has collided with limited housing supply, pushing rents beyond what many families can afford,” said Anne Ray, manager of the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse at the Shimberg Center. “This report helps policymakers and housing providers target resources where the need is most acute — including communities that are experiencing the fastest growth and the greatest affordability gaps.”

Key findings from the 2025 study include:

A growing affordability gap: An estimated 904,635 renter households earning below 60% of their area median income (AMI) are cost burdened, paying more than 40% of their income toward rent. These households are spread across the state, with 64% in Florida's nine most populous counties, 33% in mid-sized counties and 3% in small, rural counties.

Surging population and higher rent and housing costs: Between 2019 and 2023, Florida added more than 1 million households — nearly 195,000 of them renters — driven by in-migration from states like New York, Illinois and California. Despite the addition of more than 240,000 multifamily units, median rent soared nearly $500 per month, from $1,238 to $1,719.

After years of growth, Florida's older renter population is holding steady: Renters age 55 and older represent 39% of cost burdened households, up from 29% in 2010 but similar to 2022 numbers.

Most renters are working: 79% of renter households include at least one employed adult, compared to 67% of owner households. Most non-working renters are seniors or people with disabilities.

Homelessness is on the rise: The report estimates 29,848 individuals and 44,234 families are without stable housing, up from 2022, as hurricanes and tight markets contribute to displacement.

Assisted housing provides an alternative to high-cost private market rentals: Developments funded by Florida Housing, HUD, USDA and local housing finance authorities provide over 314,000 affordable rental units statewide.

Future risks to affordable housing stock: More than 33,000 publicly assisted units may lose affordability protections by 2034 unless renewed.

Evalu ating affordable housing in Florida

“State- and federally-assisted rental housing developments are essential to providing stable, affordable homes for Florida’s workforce, seniors, and people with special needs,” Ray said. “Florida Housing Finance Corporation’s programs make up a significant portion of this housing, and our study helps ensure those resources are directed where they’re needed most. Preserving these developments — and expanding them — is critical to keeping pace with Florida’s growing population and maintaining affordability.”

Since 2001, the Shimberg Center has produced the Rental Market Study every three years to inform strategic investments in affordable housing across Florida. The study evaluates needs across regions and among key populations including seniors, people with disabilities, farmworkers and others. The Rental Market Study and the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse are part of a 25-year partnership between the Shimberg Center and Florida Housing Finance Corporation to support data-driven housing policy and planning.

Connect with:

Anne Ray

Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse Manager

Anne Ray's research focuses on affordable housing policy in Florida. Anne manages the Florida Housing Data Clearinghouse.

Housing DataFlorida Housing PolicyAffordable HousingRental Housing

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Apr 9, 2026

2 min

New AI tool matches students with high-impact internships

Finding the right internship can be an important step for students, but it’s not always clear which opportunities will lead to the strongest growth. To help solve that problem, University of Florida researchers have developed an AI-powered tool that helps students identify internships most likely to accelerate their technical and professional development. Unlike traditional recommendation engines, Pro-CaRE not only predicts which opportunities will lead to stronger outcomes, it also explains why each suggestion is a good fit. In testing data collected from the students, Pro-CaRE’s predictions proved highly accurate, accounting for more than 72% of the differences in learning gains among participants. While the pilot is being tested in engineering, the tool could be adopted for other disciplines. “Internships are one of the most critical parts of an engineering education, but students often struggle to know which experiences will actually help them grow,” said Jinnie Shin, assistant professor of research and evaluation methodology in the UF College of Education. “What makes Pro-CaRE unique is that it doesn’t just offer a list of options. It provides personalized recommendations backed by data and it tells students clearly why an opportunity is a good match for them.” Pro-CaRE creates matches by analyzing each student’s coursework, major, background and self-reported interest, confidence and self-efficacy in engineering skills. It then compares that profile with a carefully chosen set of similar peers to refine suggestions. The result is more precise guidance that adapts to students at different stages of their degree programs. “Students shouldn’t have to guess or hope that an internship will be worthwhile,” Shin said. “With Pro-CaRE, they can approach opportunities knowing they’re backed by evidence, whether the role is onsite, hybrid or remote and whether it’s at a startup or a Fortune 500 company.” The system is designed to work across a wide range of companies and contexts, giving students flexibility while ensuring their choices align with their personal and professional goals. Each recommendation comes with a clear “why this?” explanation, so students can make confident decisions and discuss options more effectively with advisors. Pro-CaRE was developed by a cross-disciplinary UF team combining expertise in education and engineering. Alongside Shin, the project’s co-principal investigators include Kent Crippen in the College of Education and Bruce Carroll in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. The team is exploring external funding opportunities to expand the usage and test the efficacy on a larger scale. “Ultimately, our goal is to empower students to invest their time in experiences that will have the greatest impact,” Shin said. “Pro-CaRE bridges the gap between what students hope to gain and what internships can truly deliver.”

Apr 7, 2026

2 min

Using AI tools empowers and burdens users in online Q&A communities

Whether you’ve searched for cooking tips on Reddit, troubleshooted tech problems on community forums or asked questions on platforms like Quora, you’ve benefited from online help communities. These digital spaces rely on people across the world to contribute their knowledge for free, and have become an essential tool for solving problems and learning new skills. New research reveals that generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are creating a double-edge effect on users in these communities, simultaneously making them more helpful while potentially overwhelming them to the point of decreasing their responses. “On the positive side, AI helps users learn to write more organized and readable answers, leading to a noticeable increase in the number of responses,” explained Liangfei Qiu, Ph.D., study coauthor and PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business. “However, when users rely too heavily on AI, the mental effort required to process and refine AI outputs can actually reduce participation. In other words, AI both empowers and burdens contributors: it enables more engagement and better readability, but too much reliance can slow people down.” The study examined Stack Overflow, one of the world’s largest question-and-answer coding platforms for computer programmers, to investigate the impact of generative AI on both the quality and quantity of user contributions. Qiu and his coauthor Guohou Shan of Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business measured the impact of AI on users’ number of answers generated per day, answer length and readability. Specifically, they found that users who used AI tools to generate their responses contributed almost 17% more answers per day compared to those who didn’t use AI. The answers generated with AI were both shorter by about 23% and easier to read. However, when people relied too heavily on AI tools, their participation decreased. Qiu and Shan noted that the additional cognitive burden associated with heavier AI usage negatively affected the impact on a user’s answer quality. For online help communities grappling with AI policies, this research provides valuable insight into how these policies can be updated in the current AI environment. While some communities, like Stack Overflow, have banned AI tools, this research suggests that a more nuanced approach could be a better solution. Instead of banning AI entirely, the researchers suggest striking a balance between allowing AI usage while promoting responsible and moderated use. This approach, they argue, would enable users to benefit from efficiency and learning opportunities, while not compromising quality content and user cognition. “For platform leaders, the takeaway is clear: AI can boost participation if thoughtfully integrated, but its cognitive demands must be managed to sustain long-term user contributions,” Qiu said.

Apr 4, 2026

2 min

CEOs 5 times more likely to survive fraud than a personal scandal

If the CEO of Astronomer had overseen tax fraud instead of being caught on a kiss cam cuddling his HR chief in an extramarital affair, he might still have a job. That’s because, according to a new study, CEOs are five times more likely to be fired for personal misconduct than for overseeing financial fraud. “For financial fraud, the CEO can easily say, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me,’” said Aaron Hill, Ph.D., an associate professor in the University of Florida Warrington College of Business who led the study. “With personal misconduct, there’s no excuse.” The research, forthcoming in Strategic Organization, examined 59 cases of personal misconduct and compared them with more than 300 financial scandals at publicly traded companies between 1997 and 2020. The personal cases included inappropriate relationships, drug or alcohol incidents, domestic violence, falsifying credentials and derogatory speech. Hill and his colleagues found that boards move decisively when a CEO’s private behavior becomes public. By contrast, financial misconduct — such as accounting restatements that can wipe out billions in shareholder value — often leaves room for a chief executive to deflect blame onto others in the organization. Recent company performance influenced how boards responded, to a point. A CEO whose company was thriving could often survive a financial scandal because directors had both plausible deniability and a strong incentive not to disrupt success. But good numbers offered little protection when the problem was personal behavior. For example, McDonald’s ousted Steve Easterbrook in 2019 over a consensual relationship with a subordinate, even though the company’s stock price had doubled under his leadership. Hewlett-Packard similarly dismissed CEO Mark Hurd after harassment allegations despite his reputation for turning the firm around. “Even strong performance can’t erase certain kinds of misconduct,” Hill said. “There are some things you just can’t excuse.” The study also uncovered how scandals influenced succession decisions. When personal misconduct led to a firing, boards were more likely to promote an insider, signaling that the problem lay with one person rather than the culture of the company. Financial scandals, on the other hand, often prompted boards to recruit outsiders as a way of reassuring markets that the firm was serious about change. “It’s a signaling move,” Hill said. “Bring in an outsider after fraud, and the market reacts positively. Stick with an insider after a personal scandal, and it says the organization itself is sound.” The researchers argue that these choices reveal how boards balance their fiduciary duty with the reputational risks of scandal. While dismissing a CEO can serve as a public relations reset, Hill emphasized that it is almost always a financially motivated calculation. “Boards are supposed to look out for the company and its shareholders,” he said. “But when they decide to keep a CEO after misconduct, I think it sends the wrong message — to employees, to investors and to the public.”