Shrinking Middle: After fixing condo laws, a new crisis looms if lawmakers don’t act | Opinion

Florida’s new condominium laws might present an opportunity for developers looking to buy up older, poorly maintained buildings to replace them with modern luxury towers. The new laws, inadvertently, could also put South Florida’s last vestiges of affordable housing at risk — and state lawmakers and local officials must be aware and prepare for that scenario.

The reforms passed after the 2021 Surfside building collapse are meant to ensure that condo associations stay on top of maintenance by not allowing them to waive financial reserves and requiring inspections and reserve studies to find out how much they need to set aside for repairs. That was necessary to prevent another tragedy, but the requirements clash with the reality that South Florida’s condo inventory skews older and fixing some of those buildings may be too expensive for residents.

Miami-Dade needs 90,000 housing units that a household of four earning up to $82,560 could afford to rent, according to a 2023 study by the nonprofit Miami Homes for All.

Older condos — a components of what’s officially labeled “naturally occurring affordable housing — have helped prevent South Florida’s housing crisis from being even worse, providing homes for retirees and working-and-middle-class families left with few options thanks to skyrocketing rents and home values — the focus of the Herald Editorial Board’s series Shrinking Middle. Many of those residents are renters with little to no safety net. If they are displaced, South Florida could lose workforce it needs for its economic well-being.

It’s still unknown how many buildings are in such dire need of repair that owners might have to sell their units — or entire buildings — instead of being saddled with upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars in special assessments thanks to the new laws. A 2020 policy brief by Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center offers a potential hint: there are 258,124 residential structures — not all of them condos or buildings — in Miami-Dade County constructed before building codes were toughened in response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

The policy brief was written as a warning to the potential destruction that another direct hit by a major storm could inflict along Miami-Dade’s urban corridor. What was not foreseen back then is that a building could collapse in the middle of the night as the Champlain Towers South did, killing 98 people. Certainly, allowing people to remain in buildings that are not structurally sound — as cheap as they may be — is not the answer, but neither is allowing them to be displaced with no place to land.

Most vulnerable structures identified in the FIU study are located in the same areas that developers are eyeing for gentrification thanks to their prime location east or just west of Interstate 95 — areas like Allapattah and Little Haiti, Metropolitan Center Associate Director Ned Murray told the Herald Editorial Board.

“What I’m concerned about are condo predators,” Murray said. “They are lining up,” waiting to buy older buildings to tear them down.

State Rep. Vicki Lopez, the Miami Republican who wrote Florida’s new condo laws, said that land trusts have been buying multiple units in the same buildings to create a majority of votes in an association to eventually sell those buildings. She advised that associations can enact bylaws prohibiting the same entity from owning multiple units.

“What I resent is that they’re building luxury — not even high end, (but) luxury — and I’m shocked at the level of the number of people who are available to purchase luxury (condos),” Lopez said.

It’s clear that to prevent older, more affordable buildings from disappearing, government will have to step in. Miami-Dade County already has programs that award no-interest loans for some owners facing special assessments and to rehabilitate naturally occurring affordable housing. Lopez said she’s interested in implementing similar programs statewide.

Lawmakers reacted quickly and forcefully after the Surfside collapse highlighted the safety crisis facing condominiums. They should not wait until a new affordability crisis develops to mitigate it.

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