| Key West's
mayor has proposed allowing higher buildings for workforce housing.
The following editorial from the December 26 Key West Citizen
suggests that may be OK but only if safeguards are in
place to ensure that only affordable (i.e. workforce)
housing projects be exempt from the present height limit.
We cannot help being very skeptical about such
safeguards being possible, legally defensible, or that the city will
maintain the will to enforce such safeguards. Questions
abound: Who would own these new tallest buildings on the island?
Would residents want the island's tallest buildings to be
low-cost structures? Can the tallest buildings on the island
really be affordable? What about the push for new construction
to be hurricane-resistant (very expensive)? Are we
going to add a bunch of housing that is not hurricane-safe, and
increase the number of people to evacuate -- while using the
argument that they don't need to evacuate -- in order to justify
more housing? This makes no sense!!
While some proponents of waiving height limits may
be altruistically motivated, others no doubt are already thinking "oh
gosh, we can't afford this unless we top it with some drop-dead
luxurious penthouse units", and are seeing dollar signs.
Stay tuned. This is going to be an
interesting debate. |
Change height limit only if it helps worker housing
Workforce
housing has reached a state of emergency and working people are leaving
the Keys at unprecedented rates, some estimate 1,000 people last year.
Without the immediate and combined cooperation of city, county, and
state officials, some predict the population of Key West may be reduced
by 5-10,000 over the next five years. As a result, the economic activity
of the town is expected to take a downturn resulting in school closings,
business closings and increased living costs.
Based on
real estate sold prices in 2004, the average price of a home in Key West
is just above $800,000. At Key West's median income (about $50,000),
home ownership is unaffordable for 95 percent of the working people
living here. To exacerbate the problem, rental housing in Key West is
also becoming unaffordable and within the last year alone 318 rental
apartments have been converted into condominiums, many of them as second
homes.
Building
owner-occupied or rental workforce housing will require overcoming a
number of institutional, environmental and political hurdles including
obtaining additional building permits from the state, acquiring property
within Key West and Monroe County to build on, and finding the money to
pay for the land and cost of construction. Once constructed, ensuring
fair and equitable oversight of workforce housing will remain a
challenge, since there is currently no effective mechanism to ensure
workforce housing. Not even the Key West Housing Authority or the Monroe
County Housing Authority offer the kind of oversight we need to
guarantee equitable and fair distribution of such a scarce resource.
Recently,
Jim Quinn of the Department of Community Affairs was quoted as saying
that based on proposed changes to the Hurricane Evacuation Plan, an
additional 1,000-2,000 new building permits may become available. While
this is a good sign, these building permits may not guarantee a solution
to the workforce housing crisis.
As the
growth management system is currently set up, our local elected
officials get to decide what happens to all new building permits. If
Commissioner Nelson's position is any indication of the will of our
elected officials, we may need to consider some changes to the current
system. During his campaign, he stated he would allocate 75 percent of
new building permits to market-rate construction and only 25 percent to
workforce housing.
A recent
proposal by Key West Mayor Jimmy Weekley to consider increasing the
height limits on Key West buildings has been presented as a one-punch
solution to the problems of lack of land and cost of construction for
workforce housing. Commissioner Ed Scales has said the city should
consider raising the height limits within the Poinciana Housing complex,
an area he represents as commissioner and one of the largest pieces of
city-owned property with a potential to create new workforce housing.
This issue will be discussed for a second time at the Key West Planning
Board meeting January 20th.
We support
the proposal to raise height limits, but only under the most rigid
guidelines. First, increasing height limits should not be allowed in our
historic district. Second, the city should approve or disapprove of
increasing height limits on a case-by-case basis. And last, increased
building heights should only be considered for workforce housing.
— The Citizen |
