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I guess the politicians in Tallahassee think that with COVID-19 impacting our families and businesses, we aren’t going to notice a bill that makes it harder for homeowners to go after developers for building unsafe houses and condos.
Well, I noticed.
The Florida Senate and the state’s homebuilders and developers and their lobbyist minions should be ashamed of themselves and stop Senate Bill 736 in its tracks. And, Northeast Florida Sen. Travis Hutson (R-St. Augustine), the bill’s sponsor, should stop pushing it forward.
If Senate Bill 736 is signed into law by Governor DeSantis, homebuilders will be on the hook for defects for just 4 years instead of 10. If the builder commits intentional fraud or violates the building code or fire safety rules, it makes no difference – there are no exceptions. Four years and you’re done.
Or should I say, your goose is cooked.
To me this isn’t like a sucker punch to the gut. It’s a kick to the head with steel-toed boots when we’re down.
Under normal circumstances, this type of under-the-radar law change would be bad. Considering that we are all in a tailspin from COVID-19, and the Delta and Omicron variants, this is downright mean-spirited and undermines our communities.
Florida is one of the country’s most populous states with more and more people moving here every year. You can’t beat the weather, after all, and there is no state income tax. The flood of new residents means we’ll need more and more new housing.
Hutson’s Senate Bill 736 basically invites fraud and bad construction. We need only to consider the tragedy of Champlain Towers South where 98 people died and hundreds were literally left homeless to understand the potential impact of bad construction.
I lived through Hurricane Andrew on August 24, 1992, a Category 5 monster that caused billions of dollars in damage to the people of Miami-Dade County. Only after the storm did experts realize that the method used to tie down roofs on many of the most recently built homes was ineffective, contributing to unsafe conditions that, combined with the storm’s power, devastated South Miami-Dade County.
It took us a generation to recover from that storm.
We in South Florida are strong people who came together when times are tough. We don’t need Hutson’s Senate Bill 736 undermining the ability of homeowners to recover damages from developers who behave in bad faith and position our homeowners for weakness instead of strength.
Senator Hutson and the developers and their lobbyists should pull Senate Bill 736. Anything less is a kick in the head.
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