Thousands of Sarasota County seniors continue to fall into economic hardship year after year, according to a new report that has researchers sounding the alarm.
Meanwhile, the amount of income required to survive in Sarasota County for a family of four has soared to over $100,000 – likely causing what researchers found to be a major influx of growth in adjacent Manatee and DeSoto counties.
These results are part of the State of ALICE 2025 report released Monday, May 12, by United Way Suncoast and its research partner United for ALICE.
This latest data on populations known as ALICE – or Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed – cover changes from 2022 to 2023.
The results reflect widespread financial suffering for working families across United Way Suncoast’s five-county region, which includes Sarasota, Manatee, DeSoto, Pinellas and Hillsborough.
But of those five counties, it was Sarasota County that saw the largest rate of growth in its “survival budget” – or the income needed to survive for a four-person family consisting of two adults, an infant and a preschooler.
In that one year, the survival budget rose 10% to $104,424 for Sarasota – a county where the median income is only $77,705. The rate of increase for the five-county region as a whole climbed 8%.
“That jump is quite significant,” said Aaron Neal, United Way Suncoast’s director of data analysis about Sarasota County. “It was very jarring.”
“Working hard is no longer enough to achieve stability”
Pinellas was the only other county of the five to see its needed “survival budget” surpass $100,000, reaching $108,480. That compares to its median income of just $70,768.
Likely as a consequence, Neal said, both Pinellas and Sarasota experienced lower population growth between 2022 to 2024 in comparison to the other three counties: only 0.4% for Pinellas and 3.1% for Sarasota.
In those same years, Manatee’s population ballooned by 6.8% and DeSoto’s by 7.3%, Neal said.
Following demographic trends of the past, residents in all probability are being pushed out of more expensive areas and searching for more affordable places to live in neighboring counties, he added.
For instance, in 2023 Manatee’s survival budget was $95,000, almost $10,000 less than Sarasota’s, and its median income was higher at $79,524.
In DeSoto, which saw the biggest population growth, the survival budget was $77,928 – almost $30,000 less than Sarasota’s – while the median income was $50,868.
Such moves can leave many working families with long commutes between home, jobs, and their children’s childcare and schools, Neal said. The phenomenon also puts more cars on the road and yet another burden on the shoulders of working parents who need to afford and maintain reliable transportation.
“The ALICE data reveals what too many families in our community already know — that working hard is no longer enough to achieve stability,” said Jessica Muroff, CEO of United Way Suncoast.
“These are our teachers, health aides, childcare workers, and essential staff — the people who keep our communities running,” she added. “They deserve the dignity of financial security.”
“It’s way more stark than we anticipated”
In addition to working families, seniors in Sarasota County are suffering.
As with the last update a year ago, this report showed that almost half of all senior households in Sarasota County are below the ALICE threshold.
But what was not expected this time was how much that population would continue to grow.
For the third consecutive ALICE update, the number of 65-and-older households that fell below the ALICE threshold – which includes ALICE households and those below the poverty line – spiked by thousands.
“It’s way more stark than we anticipated,” Neal said.
From 2022 to 2023, those household numbers catapulted from 48,600 to just over 52,600 – an increase of 8.2%.
While researchers were expecting the senior number to go up – “it still puts your jaw on the floor,” Neal said.
The numbers of younger households below the ALICE threshold either rose more modestly, leveled off, or even declined, as new people moved in and families made adjustments to inflation and the pandemic.
“We still see small minimal changes in every other group, but this one continues to soar,” Neal said of seniors. “That has thrown us for a loop.”
The trend looks worse from the long view. Since 2019 senior households below the ALICE threshold increased by 42%.
If things are difficult for families with a little more means, Neal said, “then it is horrendous for our most vulnerable communities.”
“Their dignity and pride are just shredded”
Case managers at Senior Friendships Centers encounter these “horror stories” every single day, said president and CEO Erin McLeod.
“We are seeing it happening to real people. It’s not just the numbers,” she said.
Retirees come into the nonprofit’s centers for day services after “couch surfing” at friends’ homes or sleeping in their cars – bewildered at how they wound up in this situation.
“Their dignity and pride are just shredded,” McLeod said.
Senior Friendship Centers has been sounding the alarm bell for 10 to 15 years, McLeod said – back to the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, when many retirees returned to the workforce to recover lost retirement savings.
Ever since, as the housing crisis worsened in the last decade and Social Security failed to keep up with the cost of living, growing numbers of seniors struggled to get by, some taking low-wage retail jobs with no benefits.
Matters deteriorated sharply after the pandemic – when rents and housing costs exploded. Then, Hurricanes Ian, Debby, Helene and Milton damaged many affordable senior mobile home parks. And food prices are now through the roof.
Some of their clients face impossible choices: purchase their blood pressure medicine or pay the rent.
“That is just heartbreaking,” she said.
A call for “informed action”
Given such widespread hardship, United Way Suncoast is calling on community leaders and policymakers to use the ALICE findings as a tool for “informed action” on affordable housing, quality childcare, workforce development and access to health care.
Last month, the Sarasota County Commission agreed to hold a future workshop on a series of aggressive affordable housing recommendations – what could become some of the county’s boldest policies in decades.
For researchers, case managers, families and seniors, reforms can’t come fast enough.
“Everyone in our community deserves the opportunity to succeed,” United Way said in releasing the report, “and that begins with making the basics affordable.”
This story comes from a partnership between the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Saundra Amrhein covers the Season of Sharing campaign, along with issues surrounding housing, utilities, child care and transportation in the area. She can be reached at samrhein@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: United Way: Survival budget for family of four now over $100k in Sarasota County
Reporting by Saundra Amrhein, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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