South Florida developers are exploiting law meant to spur new workforce housing | Opinion
Small Florida communities, like Bal Harbour, are under attack by a handful of opportunistic developers attempting to use Florida’s new Live Local Act to cash in big. In talking with other elected officials, we’re seeing a similar strategy at play.
The Live Local law tries to spur the construction of workforce housing by allowing developers to bypass local zoning regulations in certain cases. But developers submit applications for mammoth developments that are often incomplete and not compliant with the law or other covenants. Their plans often have affordable housing units as an afterthought, while most of the property is used for luxury condos and retail space. When their plans are criticized, they file expensive lawsuits or launch publicity campaigns that infer that any objection to their project is anti-poor, racist, xenophobic or just plain cold-hearted.
Why would they do this? Because the dollars they’ll spend on high-powered attorneys and slick public relations firms will pale in comparison to the fortune they’ll make selling those luxury condos and leasing that retail space.
As the mayor of Bal Harbour, I have had a front-row seat to this.
Case in point: Matthew Whitman Lazenby, President of Whitman Family Development, which owns and operates the high-end luxury shopping mall Bal Harbour Shops. In his November Herald op-ed — titled “Affluent Florida communities are trying to block Live Local housing. That has to stop,”— he accuses the village of Bal Harbour of blocking his company from building affordable housing “for first responders, teachers and municipal employees.” This is not the first attack Whitman developers have launched against us regarding their denied Live Local application. A similar letter was published back in January, coinciding with their filing of a lawsuit against Bal Harbour.
Unlike big developers who can hide the truth behind insinuations and accusations, Bal Harbour, like most municipalities, must be transparent about every decision involving these applications.
In the case of the Whitman application, their proposal violated their pre-existing development agreement for that same piece of land, an agreement that was formalized nearly a decade ago. That construction project has been a nightmare of missed deadlines, cost overruns and snarled traffic. Now, instead of finally fulfilling that contract, they want to replace it with something even larger and more disruptive that will plunge our village into yet another decade or more of construction.
More important is that their application was woefully incomplete, ignoring even the basic, appropriate impact studies for things such as traffic, hurricane evacuation, potable water, stormwater and public schools. When we pointed out that their proposal segregated affordable housing from market-rate units, in violation of the law, they did nothing to remedy it.
All of this is well documented. Their application, site plans, communications and complaints, as well as all of our responses, are published to our website for all to see.
In reading them, you should also know that none of the failings and shortcomings of their application should have been a surprise. Whitman Development has been doing business in Bal Harbour since 1946. They’ve filled out numerous permits and applications. They know how to complete documents and move a plan forward in compliance with local laws.
While developers would like you to believe they suddenly care about lower-and middle-income Floridians, their actions speak far louder than their PR. It’s time for elected officials, from small-town mayors like me, all the way up to state legislators, to address how big developers are attempting to exploit Live Local for massive profits while hurting small communities instead of creating responsible affordable housing.
Mayor Seth E. Salver is the mayor of Bal Harbour Village.
This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 5:00 AM.