Commission OK’s 40-foot building height for Stock Island affordable housing project

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Despite a protest from Commissioner Margaret Romero that the plan to build affordable housing on Stock Island is being “fast-tracked,” commissioners voted Nov. 21 to increase the allowed height for a potential workforce housing development on College Road from 25 feet to 40 feet.

The proposed height ordinance passed on first reading and a second and final reading will take place at next commission meeting on Jan. 3. If approved then, a special referendum election will be held in March for residents to accept or deny the height variance.

The ordinance would change the city charter limiting building height for just the three city-owned land parcels on College Road, totaling about 2.6 acres. Currently, those parcels are home to the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District offices, the local animal shelter and the former Easter Seals building. Both Mosquito Control and the animal shelter are planning to move to new locations within the next year.

Commissioners have long eyed the parcels as a location for affordable workforce housing as well as the city’s homeless shelter, which must move from its currently site next to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, also on College Road. But with Hurricane Irma devastating what little affordable housing existed in the Lower Florida Keys, a new fire has been lit under city officials, who are now considering using all three parcels for housing, leaving the question of where to put the homeless shelter up in the air.

In order to attract private developers willing to reduce their potential profit margin by building affordable, rather than market-rate, housing, the number of units per project needs to be increased, according to city planners. Since available land is so limited in Key West, one of the only ways to do that is to allow developers to build higher buildings. Key West Planning Director Patrick Wright said that with the 40-foot height variance, 104 apartments could be built on the three College Road parcels.

“If you can’t go up to a second story… you could get about, maybe 70 [units] and that’s not including interior hallways and mechanical equipment,” he told commissioners.

The tallest structures currently on Stock Island are the water tanks, Wright added, and those are just over 40 feet.

Romero worried that there was no overall plan for where to build affordable housing in Key West, as well as where to relocate the homeless shelter. She advocated putting the March referendum off until the regular November election.

“Every time we don’t get our ducks in a row, the citizens pay for it,” she said. “We need to know where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”

That prompted Mayor Craig Cates to call Romero “out of touch” with the dire need for affordable housing in Key West.

“I think we’ve got a commission here that knows where we’re going. We’re going to build some affordable housing on College Road,” he said.

The vote to approve the charter change on first reading was 6-1. Commissioner Jimmy Weekley said that postponing the referendum to November would also postpone the start date for project construction. And Commissioner Sam Kaufman said the issue of affordable housing has been discussed at length for the two years he has been on the board.

“Addressing height restrictions is a very sensitive topic. We all know that. But this is very narrowly tailored and it makes a lot of sense,” he said, adding, “Everybody knows that we’re at a crisis point with respect to affordable housing.”

A housing “white paper” written by former planning director Don Craig in 2014 said Key West has had a housing crisis for at least three decades. One of the most telling statistics in the planning department’s six-page white paper was the percentage of annual income residents have to pay in rent or home ownership costs. City and federal guidelines state that not more than 30 percent of a person’s income should go towards housing costs. However, in Key West, that figure stands at 40 to 50 percent, meaning that approximately 77 percent of the city’s renters and homeowners are “cost burdened,” as the report says, a term referring to people over that 30 percent guideline.

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