How Mark Vengroff became a major force in affordable housing on the Suncoast

A few years ago, Sarasota affordable housing developer Mark Vengroff tried to buy the Magic Castle Inn and Suites in Kissimmee.

Made famous in the 2017 film “The Florida Project,” the faded purple motel a few miles from Disney World served on screen — and in real life — as a last refuge for struggling families living on the edge of homelessness.

For decades, properties like that were the backbone of the Vengroff family’s approach to affordable housing. Mark’s father, Harvey Vengroff, built a business buying aging motels, renovating the rooms into efficiency apartments and renting them at prices low-income tenants could afford.

The Magic Castle would have fit the model perfectly.

But the deal never happened.

“We couldn’t make the numbers work,” Mark Vengroff told Suncoast Searchlight during a wide-ranging interview at his office on North Tamiami Trail, where another former motel he converted now operates as affordable apartments.

Today, Mark Vengroff is moving away from the motel conversions that defined his late father’s legacy and toward a different strategy: building new affordable apartment complexes from the ground up, often financed through a patchwork of public subsidies and philanthropic support. 

In the process, Mark Vengroff, 61, has emerged as one of the most active affordable housing developers and landlords on Florida’s Suncoast. His family’s company, One Stop Housing, has assembled a portfolio of thousands of units while securing millions of dollars in government grants and incentives to pursue projects other developers say are too difficult to build.

Among the projects already underway is The Nest, a 182-unit apartment complex in Bradenton aimed at working families. Others are planned across Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties, including four developments backed by $32.9 million in federal hurricane relief money awarded by Sarasota County. 

And last month, Mark Vengroff submitted an unsolicited proposal to build a workforce housing tower across from Sarasota City Hall — part of a long-discussed plan by city leaders to bring affordable housing to the downtown core. 

The city has not yet selected a developer, but local philanthropy, including Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, Gulf Coast Community Foundation, and Sarasota Community Foundation have already pledged millions of dollars toward bringing affordable housing to the First Street site.

In all, Mark Vengroff is pursuing a wide range of projects that he says will add up to 2,000 new units of affordable housing over the next few years to help address the dire shortage of places to live for lower-income renters. To accomplish this, Mark Vengroff is diving into the region in ways his father never would: deeply immersed in the social, philanthropic and political life of the area that he believes will empower his ultimate success.

Across the Suncoast, working families have struggled for years to find housing they can afford — a problem made worse by rapid population growth, rising rents and a limited supply of lower-cost apartments. In Sarasota County alone, the 2025 Sarasota Housing Action Plan identified nearly 25,500 households as severely cost-burdened, spending more than half their monthly income on shelter.

Jon Thaxton, Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s Director of Policy and Advocacy, is one of Mark Vengroff’s biggest champions. 

A longtime proponent of affordable housing, he told Suncoast Searchlight that he believes Mark Vengroff can handle the growing pipeline of projects, including the downtown Sarasota tower, should his unsolicited bid get approved.

“We weigh our concerns with past performance and reality,” Thaxton said. “I’ve had concerns with every affordable housing project we have ever done. Real estate development is wrought with unforeseeable circumstances.

“I have been working with affordable housing developers for a very long time. I have not seen another developer who has cost controls as good as Mark.”

How the Vengroff family built a housing empire

The Vengroff family’s path to becoming one of the largest private landlords of affordable housing rentals on Florida’s west coast began with a bungled plan for more dorms at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. 

The fledgling USF satellite campus was looking to grow and needed student housing. In 2005, school administrators had an opportunity to buy the old Ramada Inn on North Tamiami Trail adjacent to campus, but the college could not weave through the maze of higher education bureaucracy quickly enough to seal the deal. 

At the time, university officials approached Harvey Vengroff, the multimillionaire founder of Sarasota-based Vengroff Williams and Associates, one of the largest debt collection agencies in the nation. They asked him to step in as the bridge buyer to give the campus more time to secure state allocations and eventually purchase the property. 

The elder Vengroff agreed and bought the 102-unit hotel across from the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport for $7 million. As Florida and the nation slipped into the Great Recession, the anticipated state funding for USF never materialized, and the university backed out of the deal. 

It wasn’t an issue for Harvey Vengroff, who turned the property’s convention and restaurant space into offices for his businesses, which remain headquartered there today. Already an owner and manager of a number of rental properties on the north side of Sarasota, he decided to transform the hotel rooms into small efficiency and one-bedroom apartments.

“Harvey always knew how to make lemonade,” said Ed Pinto, senior fellow and director of the Washington D.C.-based think tank American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, who met Harvey Vengroff in the early 2000s and became a close friend. 

“I drive by the old Ramada and marvel at how they’ve turned a run-down hotel into housing,” Pinto said. “And they rent it at low prices. They pull off the impossible.” 

Renamed University Row, the converted building opened in 2007 and has been at full occupancy ever since, with some tenants living there since the first apartments went on the market, said Audrey Abraham, its property manager. Rents now start at $925 per month.

The Ramada purchase was the gateway for the elder Vengroff to assemble a small group of local investors who went on to pick up an additional eight motels that they similarly converted to apartments across Sarasota, Bradenton, Kissimmee, Orlando and Memphis, Tennessee. 

As he approached the end of his life, Harvey Vengroff brought his two sons, Mark and Travis, deep into the fold of his expanding landlord enterprise. 

“Acquiring property and being a landlord was a hobby for our dad,” said Travis Vengroff, 39, who now lives in Bavaria, Germany. “When I was growing up, Dad would take us home on different routes. One day, he bought 10 homes for $12,000 each on the north side of town just driving down random streets and looking for signs or people who he could talk with about selling. As a child, it was annoying because you never knew when you were going to get home.”

In 2017, the brothers convinced their father to organize all of the properties into One Stop Housing to manage the portfolio that he had been growing since moving to Sarasota in 1989. 

“We wanted to make it into a real business,” Travis Vengroff said. 

With more than 4,000 units now under management, One Stop Housing’s Florida properties consistently remain fully occupied, with the Memphis properties hovering in the 90% occupancy range, according to the company. 

“Harvey had a motto: ‘Buy what other people don’t want,’” Pinto said. “That led him to look for other opportunities to buy older motels at the right price.”

From motel conversions to building apartments from scratch

For years, Harvey Vengroff had pressed Sarasota officials to allow more density on a piece of land just east of downtown, arguing the extra units would make an affordable housing project more feasible. 

He never saw it built.

Before he died in 2018, according to Pinto, the elder Vengroff gave his son a final directive: “You complete the dream.” 

For nearly three decades, prior to assuming leadership of One Stop Housing, Mark Vengroff had worked in the family’s debt-collection firm, rising to become its chief executive officer while living in Long Island. Later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he founded WestStar Group, a medical lien finance company. He sold that company and then became CEO of Walker Advertising, the nation’s largest legal advertising agency targeting the Hispanic market.

But as his father’s health declined, Pinto recalled, the elder Vengroff urged his son to come to Sarasota and carry out his vision.

Mark Vengroff did just that, fulfilling his father’s wish for the affordable housing project east of downtown.

In January, elected officials, philanthropic leaders and community members gathered for a ceremonial groundbreaking on Sarasota Station, 202-unit workforce housing development on 7.8 acres on Fruitville Road. The project moved forward after Mark Vengroff secured the extra density his father had long sought — along with a property tax abatement through the state’s 2023 Live Local Act and a $15 million federal hurricane relief grant awarded by Sarasota County. 

The Sarasota Station project represents more than the completion of the long-delayed development. It also marks a turning point from the business blueprint his father followed. Instead of finding dilapidated motels at deep discounts, One Stop Housing under Mark Vengroff’s leadership has shifted to new construction.

Part of the reason is simple economics. In recent years, the price of old hotels has more than doubled. What once cost around $16,000 per unit to buy plus another $20,000 to renovate now runs closer to $80,000 in total acquisition and renovation costs, Mark Vengroff said — a shift that forced the company to rethink its approach. 

Building affordable housing from the ground up is typically more expensive than converting aging motels. But Mark Vengroff insists the math can still work. A key part of his strategy was bringing construction in-house.

Six years ago, One Stop Housing purchased the Jo-Ga Corp. construction company, owned by Lakewood Ranch resident and licensed general contractor Gabor Sztuska. The firm was folded into the business as One Stop Housing Development & Construction LLC. Sztuska, who moved to the United States from Hungary decades ago, controls 40% ownership and serves as president of that arm of the organization, overseeing the construction of all projects, Mark Vengroff said.

Suncoast Searchlight asked to speak with Sztuska for this story but Mark Vengroff declined.

One of the first developments to rise under this construction arm is The Nest in Bradenton. Manatee County officials approved a $3.5 million loan in 2023 to help bring the project to market later this spring. 

Manatee County commissioners praised the plan, saying Mark Vengroff could deliver when his larger national competitors couldn’t.

“Many of the other developers in this space aren’t from here — they are in a commoditized market to build affordable housing all over the state and don’t necessarily know this area and what we need,” Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse told Suncoast Searchlight. “He gets involved, figures out what the community needs, and then attempts to bring it to market and operate it.” 

The Nest helped launch what has since grown into an ambitious pipeline of development across the region.

Projects in various stages of planning or construction include a 48-unit complex near Payne Park in partnership with Michael Saunders, a 135-unit complex in Venice with the Venice Pier Group, the 156-unit Forest Cove project with the Bradenton Area Economic Development Corp. and a dozen local employers, and a development eyed for teacher housing in rural DeSoto County with the DeSoto County School District.

Mark Vengroff said his ability to keep construction costs low is central to making these projects viable.

All of the company’s apartment units are built using identical designs and layouts, allowing crews to move from site to site without having to adapt to new plans and sharply reducing engineering and architectural expenses, Mark Vengroff said.

That model — combined with bulk purchasing of materials, in-house construction, owning its own heavy equipment and lower insurance costs — allows One Stop Housing to build for 40% less than its competitors, he said, without going into greater specificity.  

“We are hyper-focused, mission-driven on providing affordable housing for working families and therefore operate with lower profit margins,” Mark Vengroff said. We “keep our costs down that are then passed on to our renters.” 

Mark Vengroff said that the nearly completed apartments at the Nest are coming in at a cost of $120,000 per unit, or $135 per square foot, compared to the more than $200 per square foot many developers now quote for similar projects. 

Millions in hurricane relief funding reshape the housing pipeline

After a series of powerful hurricanes battered Florida’s Gulf Coast in recent years, the federal government sent tens of millions of dollars to Sarasota County to help address one of the region’s most persistent problems — a shortage of affordable housing.

A two-phase, $70 million grant — funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and distributed through the Resilient SRQ program — was designed to stimulate the development of multifamily housing projects aimed at serving lower-income families. 

County commissioners awarded the money in two rounds — $40 million approved in 2024 and $30 million in January. Across both rounds, nine projects received funding following a competitive process that drew more than 30 proposals. 

One Stop Housing and its nonprofit arm, One Stop Cares, emerged as the biggest recipients.

The entities secured $32.9 million to build 410 units for renters earning at or below 80% of the area median income — $69,000 for a household of two — a group often described as the “missing middle” of working adults who struggle to find affordable housing close to where they work.

The awards followed a county staff scoring process that ranked applications based on factors including the number of affordable units, the duration of affordability and overall cost-effectiveness, among others.

One Stop’s proposals ranked in the middle of the scoring matrix. Yet the company secured nearly half the available funding, while several higher-scoring projects were not funded. Some other lower-scoring projects also received awards.

County commissioners did not mention the staff scoring during their deliberations as they voted in January to award the final $30 million. 

During the meeting, Commissioner Joe Neunder singled out Mark Vengroff in the audience. 

“You’re the gold standard in my opinion,” Neunder said. “You’re an amazing man.” 

Commissioner Mark Smith told Suncoast Searchlight he reviewed the scoring but ultimately made his own judgment.

“I made a list of who I felt we should award the money to before the meeting,” Smith said. “To me, when it comes to advisory input, I look at the scoring, but in the case of Mark Vengroff, I’m very familiar with the projects he’s been doing, and I had no issue with him getting what he got.”

Other county commissioners contacted by Suncoast Searchlight did not respond or said they were unavailable for comment before publication.

A different kind of Vengroff

The elder Vengroff was infamous for having little patience for government at all levels. A sign at the entrance of One Stop Housing’s main offices has a picture of him smiling next to one of his favorite quotes: “I work hard because millions of people on Welfare depend on me.” 

He sought the least possible number of entanglements between his operations and government, with the exception of ensuring local police and code enforcement officers were satisfied with how he rehabilitated troubled properties.

This included eschewing government help to evict tenants. A 2006 Sarasota Herald Tribune article highlighted the time Harvey Vengroff took his large Mastiff dog, Churchill, to evict tenants at 3 a.m.

When asked why he diverged from his father in accepting government money, Mark Vengroff responded, “I’m a lover, he was a fighter. These dollars were coming into the community regardless. I wish it was a loan and not a grant.” 

The younger Vengroff still plans on paying homage to his father’s vision and animosity to government support by erecting a statue of him somewhere in front of the finished Sarasota Station building whose pedestal will be inscribed with one of Harvey Vengroff’s quotes, like, “I don’t speak Section 8” — a reference to the company’s policy of denying federal housing vouchers at its properties. 

Another turn away from his father is becoming an active campaign contributor to local candidates.  

Mark Vengroff has given donations to a myriad of elected officials, including $7,000 to former Sarasota Mayor Hagen Brody’s campaign for Sarasota County Commission in 2022, $9,000 to Eric Arroyo’s bid for Sarasota City Commission in 2024, and $3,000 to Kyle Battie’s Sarasota City Commission run that same year, among other contributions. 

“I support candidates who approach challenges with solutions that are non-biased, pragmatic, and make sense for the region,” he said. “We partner with our local municipalities and look to collaborate across the political spectrum with one shared goal: bringing more affordable housing to working families.”

Kruse, the Manatee commissioner who was also among the recipients of Mark Vengroff’s financial support, said he finds him to be refreshing. 

Kruse said, dollar for dollar, partnering with Mark Vengroff and One Stop Housing is one of the most cost-effective investments that local governments can make in growing affordable housing inventory.

“His philosophy is still similar to his father’s — ‘I don’t need government help’ — but he’s very involved with the community. He’s on the Bradenton EDC board and comes to all of the chamber events.” 

Planning the future of One Stop Housing

Mark Vengroff’s younger brother, Travis, said he’s proud of his older sibling, referring to the period since their father died as the “Mark Arc.”

Leaving the family business in 2019 to pursue podcasting in Bavaria, he said his brother brought fresh ideas to the family business, like implementing digital payments that allow tenants to pay with their phones and setting up an online system for tenants to upload photos of issues in units that need to be addressed. 

Mark Vengroff, like his father, exudes confidence and is bullish on the future of One Stop Housing.  

He is on the verge of recruiting a new pool of investors in the business, seeking to raise $75 million. 

Mark Vengroff said he is also now working with local nonprofit consultant Michael Corley on succession planning. But he already knows one thing for sure — when he retires, he plans on leaving the company to his staff. 

“We won’t sell anything,” he said. “These folks would make a lot more money working somewhere else, but they chose here. This is their life and more than a career. I don’t have kids — these people deserve this more than anyone. We’re trying to find the opportunities for them to build wealth.”

Kelly Kirschner is a former Sarasota city commissioner and mayor who contributes to Suncoast Searchlight. Email Kelly at hoyakelly@gmail.com