Florida’s Live Local Act Sparks New Wave of Housing
Florida’s Live Local Act Sparks New Wave of Housing
Legislation is meant to create more units for middle-income renters
By Deborah Acosta
Less than six months after Florida enacted legislation to encourage more workforce housing, dozens of developers are rushing ahead with projects that qualify for tax breaks under the new law.
The legislation, known as the Live Local Act, offers developers tax breaks and allows them to bypass local zoning rules if enough workforce housing is built. The act is meant to create more housing for middle-income renters who make 120% of an area’s median income or less.
Many teachers, paralegals and other professionals have been squeezed out of Miami, Tampa and other expensive Florida cities as rents soared.
Real-estate lawyers say they are working overtime so that their clients’ projects qualify for tax breaks next year.
“I have them in every major city—Tampa, Orlando, Miami—and we’re in a mad dash to get them done,” said Anthony De Yurre, a lawyer at Bilzin Sumberg who says he’s personally handling more than 40 different Live Local projects.
In some instances, developers are switching from pure market-rate projects to ones that include workforce housing to take advantage of the tax incentives.
Cymbal DLT, a developer that specializes in market-rate multifamily housing, was already halfway through construction on its latest project when the Live Local Act was enacted. Now, all 341 units in the Laguna Gardens project will be workforce housing.
Asi Cymbal and Hector Dela Torres, the top two executives at Cymbal DLT, refer to their project as “attainable luxury” because the apartments are open with floor-to-ceiling windows, thick soundproof walls between units and lush walking paths and a large pond.
“There’s been a lot of talk about creating attainable luxury in South Florida and there wasn’t a vehicle like this to make it available to our community,” said Dela Torres, who like his partner grew up in government-subsidized housing in New York City.
Miami developer Matt Martinez has focused on multimillion-dollar homes, shopping centers and other commercial properties. But as soon as the new legislation went into effect, he purchased more than 2 acres of land near the city of Homestead in Miami-Dade County to develop multifamily garden-style apartments for workforce housing.
“Our type of deals wouldn’t necessarily pencil without the benefit,” said Martinez. “Our plan is to build 1,500 workforce housing units in the state of Florida over the next five years.”
South Florida wasn’t hurting for new rental housing before the Live Local Act. Developers have swarmed the Miami region to build more apartments as a share of inventory than in any other major metropolitan area. But about 90% of the rental projects under construction are luxury units, according to data firm CoStar Group.
The Miami metro area also has the highest share of so-called cost-burdened renters of any major U.S. metropolitan area: 61% of its rental population are spending 30% or more of household income on housing, according to a report released this year by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
Many politicians felt the state needed to do something, and the Live Local Act received broad bipartisan support when it passed in March.
Still, not everyone in the state has been pleased with all the results. Some projects, like a residential building that would tower over the rest of Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive, are already getting pushback from the city’s mayor and other locals. Another municipality, Doral, enacted a six-month moratorium on any Live Local Act developments.
But more transplants to the state are making use of the act to build. James Curnin left New York City to build luxury homes in Miami Beach and then multifamily apartments in Miami’s Bay Harbor.
In October, he went into contract on land in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood to develop apartments in an area that is zoned industrial. If it weren’t for the new law, Curnin wouldn’t have bought the land, he said, because the land was zoned to allow for only 14 units.
“I can put 150 apartments here, so it made the numbers make a lot more sense,” he said. While 40% of the units will be workforce housing, he’s planning to make them all luxury, with finished closets, high-end amenities, and a rooftop padel court.
