From home ownership program to revisiting Miami 21, commission debates housing issues
Miami’s affordable housing crisis was a recurrent theme throughout Thursday’s City Commission meeting, the final one of 2019. Elected officials voted to explore a $250 million home ownership program, create a task force to consider changes to the zoning code and tweak the city’s definition of workforce housing.
In a day overshadowed by political drama — including a failed attempt to fire the city’s top administrator — commissioners discussed some substantial initiatives that could alter the way housing is developed and how affordable it is for Miami residents.
Home ownership program
Commissioners authorized administrators to research the creation of a pilot program that would aim to build 1,900 one-bedroom units and 600 two-bedroom units, all intended to be owned by their occupants, not rented. The city would borrow or find other sources of funding to develop the housing and be reimbursed by residents’ mortgages.
The concept, endorsed by Commissioner Joe Carollo, won some initial support from the other four commissioners and Mayor Francis Suarez. Carollo proposed his idea one month before the commission is scheduled to hear a presentation on a much-anticipated citywide affordable housing master plan developed by Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center.
Commissioners voted to a create an 11-person committee, comprising six city department directors and five private sector representatives appointed by commissioners, to devise a way to administer the program.
“We can create an appropriate agency, body or authority to do all this,” Carollo said. “Then we will be out in all districts, building homes that people are going to own.”
Suarez said that while the city considers the full master plan, administrators can still study Carollo’s idea.
“I don’t think that these two things are inconsistent,” Suarez said. “I think that you can do both.”
Revisiting Miami 21
The intersection of the housing crisis and the city’s Miami 21 zoning code is more widely discussed as city officials contemplate what gets built where. The conversation recently gained steam when the citizen panel that advises the commission on planning and zoning decisions, the Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board, voiced displeasure with a section of the zoning code that allows “special area plans,” a zoning category that allows builders to receive greater development rights in exchange for public benefits.
The board voted to recommend that the commission repeal this part of the code, eliminating the zoning tool that has paved the way for controversial developments in neighborhoods including Little Haiti and Allapattah.
On Thursday, Commissioner Manolo Reyes proposed creating a 12-member task force of residents, real estate professionals and housing experts to examine Miami 21 and recommend changes. It’s been about 10 years since Miami completely overhauled its zoning code. Now Reyes and other commissioners want to look at issues as varied as special area plans, parking requirements, the way neighbors are notified about zoning hearings for nearby properties and the amount of time it takes to get major and routine permits.
Reyes received unanimous support from his colleagues and Suarez. Commissioner Keon Hardemon, whose district includes Little Haiti, asked for part of the task force’s review to include a slew of master plans that have been proposed over the years.
Commissioner Ken Russell asked that the task force consider how to add another requirement for new developments: a study on displacement impact. He said the city should start studying how real estate development and zoning drives displacement of people from their neighborhoods, the same way existing laws mandate other impact studies.
“We care about the impact on trees. We care about the impact on traffic,” Russell said. “What about the impact on people?”
Separately, Reyes pushed for another change that sparked more debate. He proposed changing the city’s definition of workforce housing to cater to lower-income people, a tweak to a calculation that includes the area’s median income. The commissioner argued that the standard practice of using Miami-Dade County’s area median income is not appropriate in certain parts of Miami where incomes are lower, particularly where the current calculation produces a workforce housing rent that is at or near the market rate.
Russell and Hardemon argued against the change. Workforce housing is supposed to serve a portion of the working population that has trouble affording market-rate but is not eligible for lower-income housing. Russell championed a program in the OMNI district that gives residential developers density bonuses if they set aside a number of dwellings for renters in either the affordable or workforce housing categories. The commissioner feared changing the math would upend development in that zone under that program and leave a hole in the “spectrum of affordability.”
“I think we lose a big piece of the puzzle,” Russell said.
A majority of commissioners voted to pass the change on first reading. Second vote will be held in early 2020.
Senior rental assistance
The city recently debuted a $1 million program to help seniors living in certain subsidized housing to cover the difference if their rents increase, an initiative sponsored by Suarez. Senior residents who apply and are selected through a lottery process can receive up to $100 each month to cover a rent increase.
At Carollo’s suggestion, the deadline to apply for the Senior Rental Assistance Program has been extended to Jan. 31, 2020. Originally, eligible residents 62 years or older had until Dec. 20 to apply. Reyes also successfully proposed declaring the program a permanent one, instead of a pilot.
For more details on how to apply, read here.
This story was originally published December 13, 2019 at 1:56 PM.
