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The state legislator who is sponsoring legislation that would ban Florida localities from implementing any form of rent control, while funding the production of new housing, is making some changes to her bill.
Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud, who represents part of Miami, filed a 95-page replacement to her bill, SB 102, that would streamline the development process for builders, Florida Politics reports. Calatayud said she made the amendments, which she dubbed the Live Local Act, after discussions with Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.
The Senate Appropriations Committee is slated to approve the changes on Wednesday.
The revised bill clarifies that affordable housing projects selected for a tax break no longer need to have zoning or land use approvals in commercial areas. The Live Local Act would cost $711M, Orlando Weekly reports, and move $252M into the State Housing Initiatives Partnership program and $249M into the State Apartment Incentive Loan program.
Another major change from the original proposal is requiring projects to determine affordability levels based on local median income rather than the state median income, as the previous version of the bill had outlined.
“This change ensures that property in lower income areas does not qualify for exemption more easily just because local income is less than the statewide average,” one of the proposed changes read.
The legislation is being considered as a scarcity of developable land and an influx of wealthy migrants has spiraled South Florida’s affordable housing crisis out of control. Six in 10 employed adult residents in Miami are cost-burdened with housing expenses, the highest rate in the nation, according to the Miami Urban Future Initiative.
“There's a whole population of people out there who none of us typically think of as being cost-burdened [who] are stressed to be able to afford an apartment," PTM Partners CEO Michael Tillman said at a Bisnow conference in November. "It is the people who are young professionals, first responders, nurses, teachers. They can’t find a place to live within short distances of their jobs.”
The average apartment rent in South Florida was $2,069 per unit in the fourth quarter according to Lee & Associates data, a new high. The state is considering more funding as developers expect a slowdown in housing production to take hold this year.
“A lot of projects are being tabled because people think you can't do pie-in-the-sky rents, it's just not going to be built,” Lee & Associates principal Matthew Jacocks told Bisnow last week.
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