Affordable housing remains a national issue, with available multifamily properties still scarce and monthly rents rising, though at a slower pace in the second quarter of this year.
According to the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council, Florida is among the states with the most scarcity of multifamily properties, and the Sunshine State gained more than 444,000 new residents during the pandemic between July 2021 and July 2022.
To help ease the burden for renters, Florida legislators have ushered through Senate Bill 102 — the Live Local Act. The bill, recently signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is expected to create more affordable rental housing by offering multifamily developers new tax breaks, funding, streamlining permits and overriding some state zoning.
The act, which goes into effect July 1, will allow new apartment development in some formerly restricted areas, such as Florida commercial and industrial zones, and is being hailed as a boon for developers that have had issues building new multifamily properties to meet demand.
“Personally, I think it's a great measure. It allows developers to go into areas that zoning didn’t allow in the past,” Mateo Romero, a partner with Miami-based real estate brokerage firm Gridline Properties, told Benzinga. There’s been pressure on price for everyone, and we’re not building as fast as we need to meet the demand.”
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The Live Local Act is also getting praise from lending officials like David Druey, a Florida regional president of Centennial Bank, which is deploying more than $300 million to finance affordable housing development across Southeast Florida in 2023.
“The Live Local Act is one step forward to offering developers an incentive to shift to affordable housing, a sector that will be more demand resilient as economic conditions shift and interest rates remain higher,” Druey told Multi-Housing News
South Florida residents specifically are facing one of the nation’s most significant disparities between rents and income, especially low-income, elderly households. Aging Floridians on a fixed income are having difficulty keeping up with cost of living increases.
Last year, Kathleen Sarmiento at the Miami-based Alliance for Aging highlighted the deficit for Florida seniors when she told the University of South Florida’s WUSF Public Radio, "If you're on Social Security, honestly, I don't know how you can afford to live in Florida because the housing costs are high.”
Romero believes the new legislation will result in the development of affordable housing for Florida seniors on fixed incomes.
“Raising rents is a matter that affects all residents regardless of age. In the case of senior citizens, it's particularly hard due to their fixed income status paired with federal government guidelines that tend to move at a much slower pace than state and local guidelines,” he said. “SB 102 incentivizes developers and opens up the development frontiers for affordable housing, which should have a positive impact on supply and, therefore, on stabilizing rents.”
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