A housing development for Tampa General Hospital and USF Health employees is officially underway in Brandon.
The complex, called the Linden, will be Hillsborough County's first workforce housing community sponsored by a healthcare employer.
The 170-unit complex will be built by private housing developer The Michaels Organization and residential architecture firm Urban Practice on land owned by TGH.
It's slated to open to eligible healthcare workers by summer 2028.
The $60 million public-private partnership, which used the Live Local Act to streamline public approval, also received $12.5 million from the State's Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) funds and $2 million from Hillsborough County, according to a TGH press release.
On Monday, hospital and government leaders gathered for a ceremonial groundbreaking at the workforce housing site.
Tampa General CEO and president John Couris said the project is designed to help insulate employees from the downsides of a growing metro area — like the lack of affordable housing.
"It's sort of a good problem to have but still a problem to solve: this idea of workforce housing and how expensive it is to live in places like Tampa, or around Tampa," he said. "And I feel like businesses in any industry need to sort of show up and participate in the journey to provide really great housing for people who otherwise couldn't afford it."
The apartment units — a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom layouts — will be rented exclusively to TGH and USF Health workers earning between 80% and 120% of the area's median income.
That's between $64,250 and $96,360 annually for a single person living in Hillsborough County in 2026, according to the latest federal income guidelines.
Renderings of the Linden also show a playground, dog park, daycare center and transportation on site for tenants. Estimated rent amounts were not provided to WUSF.
Couris said this is a model the hospital would like to build on to better recruit and retain workers.
During the ceremony, County Commissioner Gwen Myers said that might depend on the consequences of Amendment 3, the recently passed ballot measure that cuts property taxes and is expected to drastically reduce city and county budgets.
"President John, I heard you said that we want to do more, and I want to say yes, but I got to see what we're going to say about Amendment 3 when we meet as a board," she said.
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Qualenta Kivett, TGH's chief people and talent officer, said the apartments were designed with team members in mind who work at the hospital's flagship Davis Islands campus, which also serves as the main teaching hospital for USF Health Morsani College of Medicine in downtown Tampa.
"This location is really to our academic medical center, which is where most of our team members support patient operations. ... However, we do have team members across the state," she said.
For the 15,000 TGH employees across the state, Kivett said the hospital is also working with existing apartments and rental properties to obtain discounted rates for team members — since building workforce housing could never fully meet that need.
"While the Linden is one solution, and we hope to build more homes; this is truly one solution," she said.
