Few takers for new affordable housing permits

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

It’s Year Two of Key West’s new building permit allocation program and, perhaps not surprisingly, the affordable housing permits up for grabs in March went begging.

 

Of the 55 affordable unit permits that became available from the city in March, applications for less than three units were received. But applications for market rate residential homes exceeded the number of permits available this year.

 

Last September, Key West building officials embarked on the first year in a 10-year program where the city began issuing a total of 910 building permit “units” – 91 each fiscal year – of new market rate, affordable and transient residential construction. Prior to that, there had been no new residential building permits issued in 20 years. Most of the permitted construction in the past two decades has been renovations of existing property.

 

The new permits became available when the state updated its hurricane evacuation route in 2012 and found that more residents than expected could safely get to the mainland during a storm warning. Then the Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission in 2013 signed on to allowing limited new construction in Monroe County and Key West updated its Comprehensive Plan, which set out the goals and process of awarding the newly-available building permits.

 

Last year the city received eight building permit applications requesting 43 market rate units – a unit is defined as two bedrooms, two bathrooms – and 22.9 affordable units. Most of the affordable unit permits went to the developers of Peary Court, the former military housing development on White Street that builders are proposing to turn into a 208-unit development containing 48 affordable homes.

 

This year’s program, which had a March 20 deadline for applications, had 55 affordable units and 36 market rate units available. But applications for only 2.56 affordable units were received, while 81 market rate units were applied for.

 

“Obviously we have much more market rate requests than we have available,” said Patrick Wright, a Planner II in the Key West Planning Department.

 

Key West has struggled to create more affordable and workforce housing for its residents for the past decade with limited results. City commissioners are currently stepping up the pressure on City Manager Jim Scholl to come up with realistic ideas to produce the estimated 3,000 units of affordable housing the city needs.

 

But convincing developers to build housing that reduces, sometimes significantly, the value of their investment has proved difficult. Officials had hoped the new Building Permit Allocation System (BPAS) would encourage more affordable housing, but the 2.56 units requested in March are for one new affordable apartment and two accessory, or mother-in-law, apartments to be built next to existing structures.

 

Wright said the city just hired a consulting company to update the Key West Land Development Regulations. Part of that process will involve creating financial incentives, perhaps lower taxes, for developers to build more affordable units. Some city commissioners want the regulation update to require builders renovating any residential property to provide a certain percentage of affordable units. Currently, only brand new development, not renovations which make up the bulk of the current construction projects in Key West, are required to include affordable units.

 

“That’s one we’ll be looking at,” Wright said about changes promoting more affordable development in the land development regulations update.

 

In Year Two of the BPAS program, there were a total of seven applications for the available units. The two biggest applications involved a new apartment building at the existing Ocean Walk Apartment complex on South Roosevelt Boulevard, and a renovation of the Sunset Marina, 5555 College Road, on Stock Island.

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