In a warming world, how have Tampa Bay's neighborhoods changed?

After back-to-back hurricanes in 2024, who can afford to live here and who is driven away?

What's being done to shield our communities from a future of flooding — and what are the cultural and financial costs?

These are just some of the big questions addressed during a community conversation hosted by the Tampa Bay Times Thursday at The Palladium in downtown St. Petersburg.

About 250 people convened at the historic theater to hear a panel of local experts, officials and stakeholders discuss coastal resilience, migration trends and what local governments are doing to bolster storm defenses.

Times environment reporter Jack Prator moderated the conversation sponsored by the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg.

"Where we live and the relationships we hold are critical to our well-being, and they can be profoundly impacted by our planet," Kanika Tomalin, President and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg , said in her opening remarks.

"When climate response forces us to evacuate, what are the forces in our control as a community that ensure we are able to return and to recover and to rebuild?" she asked the audience.

Prator interviewed panelists Mack Feldman, vice president of asset management at Feldman Equities; Sam Henderson, adjunct professor of natural sciences at St. Petersburg College; Amber Woods, youth chair of Florida Rising Pinellas County; Rep. Lindsay Cross, representative of District 60 in the Florida House; and Claude Tankersley, public works administrator for the city of St. Petersburg.

Here are four takeaways from the discussion.

Climate change isn't just a future threat. It's already affecting Tampa Bay.

Discussions around climate change are often forward-looking, with projections, models and estimates painting bleak pictures for what's to come.

On Thursday, though, experts made it clear that Tampa Bay is already feeling the impacts of a warming world. It's been reshaping our community here for years, they said.

Audible gasps spread throughout the audience when Tankersley shared a statistic about the low-lying Shore Acres neighborhood in northeast St. Petersburg: In 2005, tides there exceeded 2 feet just twice. In 2024, it happened 21 times. Six years from now, it's projected to happen 70 times.

"The data is there. And so now our mission is to try to find ways to alleviate this, to try to limit the amount of water that is impacting us on a regular basis," he said.

Experts invoked the 2024 hurricane season often during the conversation to underscore how the region is already facing the tough decisions born from a warming world. More than 10,000 homes flooded during Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Cross said.

"Those neighborhoods have changed and will continue to change," she said.

Voters will decide the region's future resilience

Two ballot initiatives were referenced often by the experts: a statewide, increased homestead property tax exemption , and a St. Petersburg referendum that would issue bonds to speed up payments for storm, waste and drinking water system upgrades.

The general consensus among the panelists was that if voters decide this November to eliminate or cut Floridian's property taxes, it would be more difficult for cities to better prepare for increased flooding and rising seas.

"That's definitely going to affect the housing stock and where people choose to live," said Henderson, who is a former mayor of Gulfport.

Small waterfront communities like Gulfport are "going to become a lot less attractive to live in if they can't even maintain the infrastructure they have, much less have the funds to make your community more resilient," he said.

Early estimates from St. Petersburg officials show an annual lost revenue of $75 million starting in 2028 should property taxes be cut. Plans to curb flooding in the Shore Acres neighborhood alone come with a $60 million price tag, Cross said.

"If that amendment passes, those are going to be some of the programs that are not going to be funded as quickly or as expansively," she said.

On the St. Petersburg effort to speed up water projects, panelists encouraged voters in the audience to approve it.

Local groups, including the Suncoast Sierra Club, voiced early concerns with the St. Pete ballot initiative, the Times previously reported . Environmental sticking points were the city's plan to increase its reliance on controversial deep injection wells and a lack of nature-based solutions proposed for stormwater infrastructure.

The city has a $2.7 billion checklist of drainage and water projects that is scheduled to take 24 years to finish, Tankersley explained. That work could be sped up if the local measure is passed.

It's not just coastal neighborhoods that are changing

While the region's waterfront communities saw the brunt of the 2024 storms, the aftershocks have rippled into inland neighborhoods.

Woods, the youth chair of Florida Rising Pinellas County, said her Wildwood Heights neighborhood — higher and dryer than the pricey bayside houses inundated by storm surge — is growing increasingly worried about climate gentrification.

"Suddenly, our Wildwood Heights neighborhood looks delicious for the developers. If you are looking to get away from the coast, you're not that far from downtown," she said.

"We have a lot of legacy homeowners that are still there. Our families are tied there. There's strong history there. So there's a lot of concern in our neighborhood," Woods said.

Woods spoke about the importance of neighborhoods organizing to push back against growing pressures to reshape the community.

"Developers can only do what cities allow them to do," Woods said. "They don't like pressure, they don't like bad press."

She noted that around election season, there tends to be an uptick in civic engagement. But that work should be sustained even in slower political times, focusing on policy change and studying up on the often-technical science driving resiliency efforts.

"Get involved in the neighborhood association. If you have no neighborhood association, make one," Woods said. "I did."

Retreating from the coast is an unlikely outcome

Is there a reality in Tampa Bay's future where coastal waterfront communities are moved away en masse from flood-prone areas?

The panel's experts don't think so.

Feldman said waterfront properties remain desirable for many people in Pinellas County, and there's still room to grow metro areas like downtown St. Petersburg. He noted that more than 40% of the city sits with a high-hazard area that could flood from storm surge in a Category 1 hurricane, so the big question is how to grow responsibly.

Tankersley pointed out that of the 244 miles of coastline surrounding St. Petersburg, only 17 miles are publicly owned.

Thousands of private homeowners live beside Tampa Bay, making managed retreat unreasonable, he said.

"That's the challenge of talking about retreat — for retreat to be really effective, you have to do a community-wide retreat," he said.

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To learn more about our Spotlight Tampa Bay Healthy Community series and watch a recording of Thursday's event, visit our website here .

The Tampa Bay Times launched the Environment Hub in 2025 to focus on some of Florida's most urgent and enduring challenges. You can contribute through our journalism fund by clicking here .