2025 Regional Scan Insights & Priorities

The Overview

The 2025 Regional Scan reflects one of the largest listening efforts in Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s history. Through surveys and focus groups, we heard directly from over 1,500 residents across Sarasota, Charlotte, and DeSoto Counties—a more than 700% increase in participation compared to 2023.

The purpose of this effort was to understand how residents experience life in the region and learn where we need to focus our collective efforts to strengthen our communities.

By bringing together data, lived experience, and community insights, we’re laying the groundwork for more responsive systems, stronger partnerships, and a shared path forward rooted in the needs of the people who call this region home.

This report offers a roadmap for individuals, organizations, local governments, and leaders to align their strategies with what the community is asking for.

Top Priorities for Our Region

Where Do We Go Next?

Affordable Housing

People across all ages, backgrounds, and income levels said housing costs are the region's biggest challenge.

Protecting Our Natural Environment

Residents are concerned that overdevelopment, declining water quality, flooding, and habitat loss are threatening what makes this region livable.

Helping People in Times of Crisis

People want better, more accessible help for those facing homelessness, food insecurity, and natural disasters.

Working Parents

“Parents have to decide between work and daycare—there just aren’t affordable options.”

The story wasn’t the same for everyone. One group had different priorities: families with kids 18 or under, earning less than $150,000 a year. Among these 201 respondents, affordable housing remained the top concern (51.2%), followed by improving public schools (33.8%) and access to affordable childcare (28.9%).

Nearly all respondents with caregiving experience (97.9%) report that childcare costs “too much money,” with many describing expenses comparable to a second mortgage. Families across income levels report being priced out of quality care or forced into difficult tradeoffs—reducing work hours, leaving the workforce, delaying having children, or relying on informal and sometimes unreliable arrangements.

A Community Ready to Act

This scan shows a community under growing financial and structural strain yet one that retains a strong sense of shared responsibility and a clear willingness to act. Residents recognize that the region's future is at risk if workers, families, and older adults cannot afford to live here, if the environment continues to be destroyed, and if those in need don't get help when they need it most. They consistently call for solutions that match the scale and complexity of these challenges.

Across the entire regional scan, one of the clearest themes to emerge is the extraordinary empathy residents feel for one another. Even amid polarized politics, rising costs, and rapid growth, people consistently express a deep sense of responsibility for their neighbors and a desire to help strengthen the community. This compassion shows up in every dataset—from survey responses about crisis support to open-ended narratives about housing and environmental change.

Let's Act, Together

In Need of Inclusion

65%

Average percent of respondents choosing challenges that did not personally affect them.

48%

Percent of respondents who feel like they do not always belong in their local community.

40%

Of those who do not always feel like they belong, 40% say that the local government does not listen to them.

A Roadmap Toward Thriving Communities

“At its core, this work is about putting community first: grounded in transparency, guided by data with purpose, and focused on responding with care"

Gulf Coast is committed to sharing the findings broadly throughout the community to guide and inspire ongoing conversations that aim to result in actionable outcomes.

Read the Full Report