The Live Local Act: ‘Affordability’ comes at the cost of local control
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I’ve been mayor of South Miami for almost four years now. I ran because I believed local government matters most. We know our neighbors. We know our streets. We know what kind of city our residents want to live in.
My job is to make sure our voices count when decisions about what gets built in South Miami are made. I can no longer guarantee that since the passage of the Live Local Act.
I am not against building housing, particularly affordable housing. I started my career as a housing advocate and fought for greater investment by our state while serving in the legislature. South Miami needs it. And so does every community in Miami-Dade County.
Lowering housing costs unquestionably requires the creation of more housing supply. But that new supply should be built where the necessary infrastructure exists – near mass transit and where there is water and sewer capacity. Not immediately next to single-family neighborhoods.
What has been sold as a “solution” to Florida’s affordability crisis to speed up the delivery of critically needed units, increasingly appears just to be another sweeping proposal to override local rules and allow intense projects to encroach into areas not designed to support them – on church and school parcels, next to single-family homes, and in industrial areas.
Today, under Live Local, a developer can purchase a property in my city right next to a single-family neighborhood, propose a building that exceeds every height limit and density restriction South Miami has on our books, and we cannot stop it. No public hearing or input required. No vote by my commission to find a balance between competing needs.
Across our county, we’re literally seeing these conflicts rising daily. Whether in South Miami, Coconut Grove, Wynwood, or on Kendall Drive and 95th Avenue, towers of more than 20 stories, with hundreds of units, are being developed just a single block or few blocks away from traditional, single-family neighborhoods left defenseless by the Live Local Act.
My residents are calling me. They are angry; frustrated by the high cost of rent. Worried about what their neighborhood will look like in five years. Sadly, I must tell them the truth. Under current law, there is very little I can do.
That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.
Local government exists precisely because the people closest to a problem are best equipped to solve it. A state law that strips us of that authority doesn’t solve the housing crisis. It just moves the decision from South Miami to Tallahassee.
Solutions to today’s crisis shouldn’t come at the cost of destroying what makes our communities special. Our neighborhoods should be cherished and our ability to shape our own future guarded zealously. Local investment in housing, in the form of property tax exemptions to developers, should yield a better return in the form of true affordability. Not monthly rents of $2,800 for a studio and $3,678 for a two-bedroom unit.
What I know is this: solving our housing crisis requires elected representatives at every level of government to work together. Continued overreach by Tallahassee has yet to lower rents. Hopefully, our state elected leaders will amend the Live Local Act to allow local elected leaders to enforce rules designed to prevent encroachment into our single-family neighborhoods. Until then, all our neighborhoods are at risk.
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