Senate Bill 102 Live Local Act affordable housing zoning
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
It is a stretch of the recording that this archive identified as a separate matter — a call to order, a recess, or something taken up that the agenda does not list. There is no official title, no staff recommendation and no disposition, because the county never recorded one. Everything below is inferred.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Planning Commission, Apr 6, 2023
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
The county’s minutes for Planning Commission, Apr 6, 2023
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 14m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 95% of 57 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Denise, is that the end of the agenda? This was the last item on the agenda. Okay, before you adjourn, I know it's late. Um it is very late. I don't know who to blame for that. I'll blame myself. Um I gotta advise you on one particular issue. I actually was asked by a commissioner to educate you on an issue that will affect you. Um if I could ask the audience to keep it down, I'm still we're having a meeting.
We're almost there.
We're still in session. We're still in session, so please if you're gonna have discussions, take it outside. Thank you. So I apologize.
Oh that's all right. So what I passed out to you is um a portion of a very large bill that was recently signed by the governor, passed by the legislature, signed by the governor, it's Senate Bill one oh two, which is commonly known as the Live Local Act, which was well advertised as the affordable housing bill that um was touted by the legislature and the governor. Um most of it doesn't directly affect the Planning Commission, but there is a component of it
that directly affects what you do. And I was asked by a commissioner to educate you on this because it will affect you. So in this affordable housing bill. The legislature effectively rezoned a lot of property in Pasco County. I know that sounds odd, but they effectively have done that. They've they've imposed a requirement that we must authorize multifamily and mixed-use residential as allowable uses in area any area zone for commercial,
industrial, or mixed use, if at least 40% of the residential units of the multifamily residential development are for a period of 30 years affordable as defined in that section. That section defines affordable as affordable to a family that's making up to one hundred and twenty percent of the average median income in Pasco County. So it's typically defined as
Low or moderate, some people consider it workforce housing. But if forty percent of it is that type of housing, we have to authorize multifamily even in industrial areas, even in commercial areas, and even in areas that are zoned for mixed use. Um and I guess to add insult to injury, um as far as the counties go, we have to do it at the maximum density in Pasco County. So Mm-hmm.
In that case we're twenty-four.
I don't know remember what our maximum density is, but it's twenty-four. Yeah, well isn't even in EC isn't it thirty-two units per acre?
Yeah, there's thirty-two.
Mm-hmm. Uh um and we cannot restrict the height or density or the use. Um now luckily for us this law ex this particular provision of the logs says it expires in October one of twenty thirty-three, but that's ten years from now. Um
The the caveat that 40% has to be affordable might dissuade some folks from attempting to do this. I don't know because it depends on the other incentives that were put into the bill. There are some property tax exemptions, there's some direct incentives they can get from the state in this bill. But the concern that's been raised by staff, some of our board members is that areas that you are zoning today for industrial commercial
mixed use under this bill there's no guarantee they will be industrial commercial mixed use. So literally you could be zoning a property C2 think you're zoning it for commercial under this bill, it could become multifamily. Not not even necessarily mixed use multifamily, just plain multifamily. So under what under what c
circumstances could we refuse to approve a multifamily development?
Well, You don't ironically you don't have to approve a new MF1 zoning district or new multifamily. Um this doesn't require you to do that, but if they locate on industrial, commercial, or mixed use zoning districts You you they will never come to you. It actually says they have to be administratively approved by staff.
So back to Chuck's question I guess. So if somebody comes in tomorrow and wants to put multifamily on existing industrial land that we've reserved for that use, they can just go ahead and do that?
Unless the property owner prevents that from happening. D this says that a county must authorize. It doesn't say that the property owner has to authorize it. So
And they can do it at max density if they want.
the max density allowed in Pasco County and it has to be administratively approved. We can regulate things like parking, setbacks, you know, stormwater, you know, typical
But we have no say on the infection.
Yeah when is this effective? Is it is it's a
It's already f it's already been signed into law. Now the as I mentioned um it doesn't require the property owner to allow this to occur. So if you are approving a new industrial, commercial, or mixed-use zoning You do have the right to ask the property owner, are they willing to restrict it themselves? I mean, you know the property owners sometimes do voluntary deed restrictions. It's it's a worthwhile question to ask because this
just came up. We had a large industrial tract that I think you remember came to the Planning Commission off of the Sun Close near Shady Hills area. Yep. I asked Barbara at the board meeting, are you willing to restrict the industrial track so that it isn't multifamily. She said she would. So I mean it it's an issue that we may be able to address on new industrial commercial and mixed-use zonings. The applicant may be willing to voluntarily restrict the property either through a deed restriction or conditions.
Or there's probably a bigger problem is stuff that's already been industri zoned industrial, commercial, or mixed use. There's no guarantee that that that you will get what you zoned under this bill.
So I had nothing to do with the drafting of this. Um I got my personal opinions on whether this is the most effective way to assure affordable housing. Right. One might argue that if you don't have a job that you don't you can't afford housing no matter how affordable it is, and we reserve some of these areas for job production. Um but
I'm apparently the legislature has more wisdom than me now on that way.
And it can create infrastructure nightmare. Pardon me? It could be an infrastructure nightmare that we can't we have no way of weighing in on.
Is mixed use M P U D zoning?
That's unclear. Um it just says mixed zone for mixed use.
We don't you know we only have we have one compound category called mixed use that doesn't even exist anymore. We have some PDs that could be considered mixed use. It's unclear what the this is the problem when the legislature gets into zoning. They don't know what they're talking about. And so I don't know how to define that, but probably we do have some MPs. that have areas that are designated for that are actually labeled mixed use. So if we had an MPUD with an area labeled mixed
use, it's probably a good argument that it's zoned for mixed use. Hm. I'm not sure the entire MPUD. I mean you could because we have some M Puds that have some residential pods in them that don't allow non-residential uses. I think it'd be a stretch to say that's mixed use just because there's a commercial pod next to it. Isn't that making sense? Right,
right.
So take it for what they're worth.
these this bill came out of Southeast Florida and the Jamie to your question the way it was explained was what we look at as butterom and vertically integrated mixed use is what is what they're aiming for.
The problem is is that you have a problem as I see it is this may work for Metro Dade but it may not work for Pasco County. It's a one size all fits it's
one size all but not all the same. If you go to Metro Dade they probably have some industrial and commercial tracks that are sort of redevelopment type tracks that probably Sitting there unused. Right. And it might make some sense to make it developed with multifamily. That's not Pasco County, though. I mean, we have mostly greenfield development and a lot of our industrial commercial tracks are well. We had T B R P C Diddy studies saying we're lacking industrial, large industrial tracks. And so we've
zoned a lot of stuff industrial with the hope that it would generate. Jobs in Pasco County.
Well and that's my concern 'cause we've done that, trying to plan for that future. And somebody I'm afraid somebody now comes in and approaches an owner in the middle of that industrial zone and says, Hey, I wanna put a bunch of apartments.
Now, we do have some industrial tracks or maybe even some commercial ones w where the county has given financial incentives for that type of development and it's documented through an incentive agreement and I think I'd have a strong argument that they could not do it in those areas because it would impair our existing contracts. But We have a lot of industrial that's n and commercial that is not subject to any incentive agreement. It's just straight
C two I one zoning that it would be very difficult to prevent multifamily from occurring.
So I only bring it to your attention because you want to ruin our day. Well I think your day was already rusted.
I think it's the number seven million seven million bootings that they're incentives that they're going to pass out to try to in a hurry Affordable housing. We'll have to see how that goes. Sometimes and I can think about that with a couple of years ago the solution on roofs and they allocated a bunch of money that never actually got distributed. So we'll see how that actually
plays out.
Yeah, but that's a little misleading to say it's seven hundred that's how much the state is giving out. There are actually property tax exemptions that the county involuntarily has to give out for this as well. So that it's not just seven hundred and eleven million. When you provide this if you provide at least seventy units over Portal Housing you also get property tax exemptions too. This applies to city and county. There's similar pr this I s only copied you the one from the county, but the cities were subject to the
same requirements.
But in Pasco County our cities don't have a lot of large tract zone for industrial and commercial. So they may have some, I'm not saying they have none, but the the majority of Pasco County's industrial and commercial and mixed use tracts were probably not incorporated to Pasco County.
So I only bring it to your attention because if you start seeing applicants voluntary voluntary deed restrictions to address this issue or MPD conditions addressing this issue, that's the reason. And you have to be cognizant if somebody's coming in for a rezoning to I one that you would normally say Hallelujah, yeah. You've got to be cognizant of this issue. We should try to restrict it. Problem is these are voluntary deed restrictions.
So if an applicant came in and said, I don't want to restrict it, I want it to be vol I want the opportunity to put affordable housing in it, you would just have to take that into account when you're making your decision.
Got it.
Mm. So sorry to be the bearer of that
news.
Well there's no doubt that we need workforce for affordable housing, but you know, there's people that can't afford to.
The interesting thing though is there's no requirement here that the areas that we have zoned for multifamily be affordable. Right. So the areas that we already have zoned for multifamilies apparently don't have to be affordable. Yeah, why wouldn't you be right-scale
Ironically. I don't know. Fortunately or unfortunately, creating new commercial under our comprehensive plan is not easy either. So it's not like we're gonna go out and entitle a bunch of sites that they can use for this.
True, but I think you s I don't know really uh how much you realize how many C T rezoning you have on your consent agenda that you're routinely approving. I mean you have more than you think.
Because we didn't know this was gonna happen. Because there was one today. We we thought it was for it
was continued. I don't remember what you have on your advent. I'm just saying that it's it's fairly common for you to get zonings to see two. Mm-hmm.