ST. PETERSBURG — With Florida’s affordable housing situation still at crisis levels, local officials, state lawmakers, researchers and others are looking to come up with new ideas, from zoning changes to smaller minimum lot sizes.
There was a daylong discussion of the issue held on the University of South Florida’s campus recently, hosted by the Florida Policy Project, a think tank founded by former Republican state Sen. Jeff Brandes.
Brandes has major issues with the Live Local Act — a law passed last year to boost housing opportunities in Florida but which he said amounts to “one-size fits all policy” that treats the state’s largest and smallest counties the same way.
The onetime legislator said the law focuses largely on apartment developers, lacking sufficient incentives for single-family home developers, and he urges zoning changes including allowances for “accessory dwelling units,” or ADUs, and lowering minimum lot sizes for developers.
“None of those really are contemplated in Live Local 1 or Live Local II,” Brandes said, a reference to the measure passed this year that attempts to alleviate some of the concerns of the original legislation.
The in-law units
ADUs are better known as secondary units, back-yard cottages or in-law units, and they have been growing in number in California in the past eight years.
“By the late 2010s there was a growing consensus that something had to happen,” said M. Nolan Gray, the research director of California YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard), which advocates for affordable housing.
“The status quo was totally untenable, Gray said. “ADUs were just so inoffensive. ADUs just check every box. … I think part of what had happened, the forces of ‘no’ had just been saying no to every possible reform for the longest time, but by the time we got to ADUs, there was this feeling of ‘Come on, this is really the minimum we could be doing.’ So we’re not going to yield to the politics of saying no to everything. We’re going to take some action.’”
Edward Pinto, a senior fellow and the director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, said that the push for ADUs in California had actually started in the 1980s.
“It was a game of whack-a-mole between the Legislature and the localities, and then finally the damn broke in 2016-2017,” Pinto said. “But that was 30 years after it started.”
Lesley Deutch, a principal for John Burns Real Estate Consulting in South Florida, said that while she liked the “idea” of ADUs, it would allow for the construction of more vacation type rental properties than single family homes. And she said that another obstacle is the number of homeowner associations in Florida.
“A lot of them won’t allow extra construction,” Deutch said. “Not only are you dealing with the state and the local municipality, but also you’re also dealing with your local HOA, and to me that’s a giant headache, and it’s a hard hurdle.”
Live Local
Later in the day the discussion moved to how Live Local is playing in certain areas of the state.
A point of contention has been the so-called “missing middle” property tax exemption that encourages more affordable units in new or recently constructed developments. The law allows for a 75% property tax break if at least 70 units are affordable to people earning up to 80 percent of the median income for the region, up to 120% — a much higher level of income than traditional affordable housing projects.
Pasco County has been one of the most vocal governments in Florida in publicly criticizing elements that part of the law.
Meanwhile, a provision in the 2024 legislation updating the Live Local law does allow “certain taxing authorities” to opt-out of giving a 75% property tax break for apartments priced for families making 80% to 120% of the median income for the region. The Pasco County Commissioners expect to discuss the option of opting out of that provision later this month.
Pasco Commissioner Jack Mariano said during this week’s discussion that the opt-out clause will free up the county.
“But as far as this whole thing is? I wish they could go and just relook at the whole thing,” Mariano said.
Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse noted that the 120% of the Area Medium Income provision in the law “took away some of the bang” of the Live Local Act, saying that there was no need to incentivize people at that relatively high level of income. According to the May 2023 Manatee County income guidelines, 120% of the AMI in Manatee was $76,800 for an individual, and $109,680 for a family of four.
“Honestly, the missing middle is great, but fortunately, the AMI’s have gone up faster than my rents have gone up, and in part due to supply, and in part due to the economy, and that’s what you should want,” Kruse said. “It’s gone up to the point where the 120% is no longer a true missing middle. The 60-80% is more of a missing middle now. People at 120% can just go out and get an apartment.”
Expediting building permits
Another state Senate bill, SB 812, designed to boost housing construction, is sponsored by GOP State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a home builder and developer.
Ingoglia represents Citrus, Hernando, Sumter counties and part of Pasco County. His measure allows cities with a population of 10,000 or more and counties with a population of 75,000 or more to expedite the process for issuing building permits for residential subdivisions or planned communities.
“One of the reasons why we have an affordable housing crisis in this state is that everyone wants to move here,” Ingoglia said. “The other part is that we’re seeing local governments artificially constrain supply, and they’re doing that by overregulation.”
He shared a panel discussion with Jeremy Susac, vice president of government affairs with Lennar Corp., one of the largest home construction companies in the nation. A former chair of the Republican Party of Florida, Ingoglia said that as a home builder and a legislator he gets frustrated when he hears local governments discuss affordable housing.
“To me, they talk out of both sides of their mouth,” he said. “They say we need affordable housing, but guess what? We’re going to put all these mandates on you. We’re going to restrict what you can build. We’re going to restrict supply, we’re going to take forever on your permits, and where do you think that all gets passed on to? It gets passed on to the end user.”
Ingoglia added that the housing shortage in the state will only abate with the construction of more homes, which he says would be enhanced by getting local government out of the single-family residential permitting process “once and forever.”
“The only way to keep housing prices stable for the long and short term is to make sure enough supply meets demand. If you are not doing that, you are part of the problem. This legislation will help that. It will allow more homes to go on the market.”
