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Don’t release the
height limits
The county’s
workforce housing task force, comprised primarily of folks with some
stake in the development game, has brought forth its latest proposal to
change the face of the Keys in the name of affordable housing.
We support the
development of affordable housing. We always have supported the
development of affordable housing. We have, however, always opposed the
building of new units for affordable housing when we have done so little
to protect our existing stock.
Our feeling has
always been that if we put as much money and effort into protecting our
existing stock as we do paving the way for new units, we would be able
to get a handle on the affordable housing crisis.
In this latest
proposal, the task force suggests lifting the height restrictions on
buildings in unincorporated Monroe County, going from the current
35-foot limit to a 37-foot limit.
According to Jerry
Coleman, attorney for the task force, that two feet would make all the
difference in getting 140 more new units built in the near future
because the designers could add another floor to proposed properties.
The thought
process here is that with under-building parking, the builder would be
unable to get an additional floor on the existing designs and maintain
the height limit.
The problem with
that logic, however, is that we have seen complexes built within the
35-foot height limit, with ground-level parking and two stories, and
they don’t assault the senses.
We can think of
few reasons, for residential housing, that a builder would need to
configure for three floors above parking, but we can think of several
scenarios where the extra floor would come in very handy for commercial
applications like hotels and such.
Coleman brought
the proposal forward because the Carlisle Group, a Miami-based developer
of low-income housing, says it must have the variance to build 50 units
per parcel, which in turn is part of the package for their federal grant
assistance to build affordable units.
And as always, the
matter is now a crisis because the group has to have the projects in
progress by January.
We’ve heard all
that before.
What we haven’t
heard is why we should allow the county to dump the height restriction.
One of the reasons
for the height restriction is so that there is little chance we’ll look
like Miami
Beach, with
waterfront high-rises and ugly multi-story buildings depriving us of
what is left of our views up and down the highway.
And with the
density restriction of 18 units per acre, how much difference will an
extra two feet in height actually make?
One of the
problems we have with this proposal is that our leadership has shown an
uncanny ability to open the doors for affordable housing, and then throw
away the locks for all development. And the end result is that we
usually get market-rate, or near market-rate units, from lots of
developers, and no affordable housing in return.
In all fairness,
the Carlisle Group has been more successful that many others in actually
building workforce housing units, and this is not an opinion against
their efforts.
We simply hate to
see the county open a door that has been closed for many years in the
quest for additional units.
We would rather
see them protect the units we already have and throw the support behind
that endeavor.
We are losing our
workforce almost as fast as they can pack up and get out of town, mostly
because they can’t find decent places to live that they can afford.
By going through
the redevelopment process, we can not only upgrade the housing for our
all-important workers, we can help control further degradation to our
environment and quality of life.
And none of the
above issues is aided in any fashion by releasing the height
restriction. |
