Miami-Dade $10 lots for affordable housing remain vacant. Sparks fly on who to blame

Miami-Dade County’s practice of all but giving away land for small housing projects could face a shake-up, as county commissioners threaten to strip developers of properties after an audit showed poor oversight allowed participants to ignore the rules.

“This is embarrassing,” Jose “Pepe” Diaz, chairman of the County Commission, said of the report out this week by the board’s auditor. The report showed developers were allowed to ignore price caps, miss development deadlines and generally violate rules without consequences from Miami-Dade’s housing regulators over the last decade.

READ MORE: Miami-Dade turned over 1,400 lots for affordable housing, and some land sits vacant

Diaz on Wednesday won approval of legislation instructing the commission auditor to bring back a list of properties that Miami-Dade should take back from developers and have an item ready for board approval to complete the seizures.

The audit released this week documented how some developers lost their county lots to foreclosure, including one batch of 28 properties the county turned over to a developer in 2004 now valued at $7.1 million. The audit also found developers and purchasers of the lots were able to ignore required price caps on homes built on the properties, and instead buy and sell them at market rates.

Miami-Dade offers surplus land in exchange for developers agreeing to build housing on the property, with the county retaining authority to take back the properties if price caps aren’t followed or deadlines aren’t met. The audit found Miami-Dade isn’t policing the program to catch rule breakers.

“We have to get our house in order,” Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said. “We’re in the midst of an affordability crisis. What we need is land to develop for affordable housing.”

Michael Liu, the county’s housing director, on Wednesday said he agreed more oversight is needed but that the county has only funded two positions to do the site inspections, legal research and other tasks needed to police the deals thoroughly.

“I”m happy for the light on this,” he said. “The program needs resources.”

The audit does not tally how many of the more than 1,400 lots given to developers for nominal or discounted amounts have yielded low-cost housing for Miami-Dade residents, so it’s not clear how widespread the issues are. The audit does include a list of each property in the program, who received it, and whether it has been developed.

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Miami is by far the largest recipient of lots in the county’s programs, and nearly 90% of the properties transferred to the charity since 1999 are listed as developed in the audit, according to a Miami Herald analysis.

Overall, the audit shows about half of the 1,438 properties are recorded as developed, with more than 200 still vacant but with months or years to go before county development deadlines arrive.

Those deadlines are a source of friction, since commissioners have added years to existing development deals that allow developers to let former county lots remain vacant. Levine Cava has called for competitive bidding on the lots, instead of the existing system where individual commissioners typically sponsor deals for county land in their districts.

In 2020, outgoing commissioner Audrey Edmonson, now a Democratic candidate for Congress, sponsored a sale of $10 million worth of county lots for only $10 in a no-bid deal to affordable-housing developer Palmetto Homes. That deal helped spark new scrutiny on the county’s lot giveaways for housing projects.

Developers say that while the lots are close to free, they still face daunting costs related to permitting and construction while complying with county price caps on the properties. Those were set at $205,000 until developers succeeded last year in their longtime campaign for an increase, with the maximum sales price now at $318,000.

A representative for one of the top recipients of county lots, the nonprofit Neighbors and Neighbors Association, lashed out at commissioners during the discussion of Miami-Dade possibly taking back properties.

“It’s not right,” Leroy Jones, director of the charity, shouted from the second row of the spectator area after Diaz declined to let him address the board. “We’ve got a lot of money invested in those lots. That we’re going to lose. It’s not fair.”

This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 7:27 PM.