Push for affordable housing rejected by state

Push for affordable housing rejected by state

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

It sounded like a good idea aimed at reducing the dire need for affordable housing in Key West.

But a previously-passed resolution allocating all the upcoming available building permits to affordable housing projects has been rejected by the state Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO). And with time running out to use the 91 Building Permit Allocation System (BPAS) units by June or lose them, city officials don’t have time to rewrite the resolution language.

As a result, the city planning department will revert back to the previous land development regulations, which state that 50 percent of all available BPAS units will go towards affordable housing. Under the old regulations, 48 of the 91 building permits had been set aside for affordable housing projects in the 2016-17 cycle.

“They [DEO] basically said you can’t do that,” said Key West City Manager Jim Scholl about the rejection of the 100 percent affordable housing resolution, passed by Key West City Commissioners last April. “We’d rather keep the current regulations without modifying them because we would have more control.”

Because Key West has been designated by the state as an area of “critical control” due to its location and lack of vacant land, the DEO oversees all building development as well as the accompanying development regulations. Currently, the city has a total of 91 units of new housing available each year for the next 10 years. A unit equates roughly to a one-bedroom apartment. The current year four cycle ends in June.

After city commissioners passed the 100 percent affordable BPAS resolution, sponsored by Commissioner Sam Kaufman, the local land use regulations were rewritten to reflect the change and sent to the DEO for approval. That first attempt was rejected and new language was written. But the second effort was also rejected by the DEO, which said the language was not consistent with the city’s own comprehensive plan, which governs Key West growth management. The DEO submitted its own suggestions for how the land use regulation could be rewritten.

The DEO wording, however, was not something that Key West officials agreed with. While they could appeal the decision, there isn’t time before the June deadline, when the BPAS units must be allocated to specific projects.

“We have politely declined [the DEO] request to make changes and said we prefer to leave the land development regulations in place,” Scholl told commissioners. “It would give us more flexibility than the limits they were trying to impose.”

The DEO rejection was disappointing news to commissioners, particularly Kaufman, who wants all BPAS units over the entire 10-year development cycle to be allocated to affordable housing.

“We really need to have a plan for using our [BPAS] units. That seems to be the essential problem here,” he said.

“We need to plan to put out the requests for proposals to get going,” said city Planning Director Thaddeus Cohen. “We need low income affordable housing in this community. We have the BPAS units. We need to use them.”

Cohen has been working to develop new density regulations for city-owned land on Stock Island’s College Road as well as the Truman Waterfront. He will be bringing draft resolutions to the Planning Board for consideration. If approved, those resolutions would then come before the city commission for approval.

By increasing the density limits on developable property in Key West and on Stock Island, multi-unit apartment buildings could be built to provide affordable housing for lower-income residents. Another solution floated to encourage developers to take on less-profitable housing projects would be to increase the height limits on buildings, again allowing more units to be built per project.

Restricting all or most development on the island to affordable would all but eliminate the luxury housing that is in demand right now. However, affordable unit set-aside only applies to residential projects, not commercial. In addition, there is a pool of building permit units that have been reserved for existing vacant lots in Key West that will allow owners to build market rate or luxury housing.

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