Florida Embraces New Urbanist Mega-Developments

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week’s stories include:

• A look at a Florida bill that would make it much easier to build massive “new urbanist” master-planned communities
• The awkward irony of Zohran Mamdani’s “rent ripoff” hearings excluding the complaints of public housing tenants
• Michelle Wu’s half-hearted support for rent control

The state would likely have even more visionary “new towns” if local governments didn’t make the process for building them so long and laborious. Any developer trying to build a new planned community would first have to get a long series of amendments to county growth plans and zoning codes approved by local elected officials.

That’s a long process, even when local officials eventually say yes and don’t demand too many concessions.

A pending bill in the Florida Legislature would make the process far easier, at least for the next Seaside.

Senate Bill (S.B.) 345, authored by Sen. Stan McClain (R–Ocala), would allow builders of large, 10,000-plus acre planned communities to skip local rezonings, public hearings, and discretionary reviews by local elected officials.

In exchange for dedicating 60 percent of project land to conservation purposes and building the project along “new urbanist” design principles, new town builders could get their project certified as a “blue ribbon” project by the state’s Department of Commerce in a quick 45-day process.

After that, local governments would be required to administratively approve state-certified blue-ribbon projects.

Taken together, S.B. 345 offers a remarkably streamlined process for very large developments, in exchange for that dedication of conservation land—land that could still host recreational facilities, utilities, and the like.

A provision of the bill does require that 20 percent of residential units be either affordable units or “missing middle” units like duplexes, triplexes, and small apartments. But all are unit types one would expect a new urbanist development to contain in spades.

It’s the kind of law that the backers of California Forever—a new city project in Solano County, California, that’s currently stuck in permitting hell—would kill for.

In a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development last week, McClain described his bill as enabling growth while also preventing that new growth from “eating a lot of the greenspace, agriculture, and whatever else we need.”

Opponents of the bill at the hearing included representatives from county governments and preservationist groups, who both argued McClain’s legislation steamrolled over necessary public input.

That committee approved the bill 8–4 after an amendment was added that prevents data centers and golf courses from being built on the conservation space.

McClain’s bill is an interesting fusion of housing ideas.

New urbanism started as a planning critique of post-war suburban sprawl. Its proponents generally favor a very particular kind of “human-centered” infill development in existing communities over any construction on greenfield sites.

S.B. 345 makes it much, much easier to build on greenfield sites, but only if the builder adopts the new urbanists’ anti-sprawl design principles.

That’s got to make some heads explode.

Any New York tenant who’s got a bone to pick with their landlord will get a chance to have their say at one of the five “rent ripoff” hearings organized by New York City’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and his far-left housing adviser, Cea Weaver.

The only exception is tenants who live in New York public housing units. As the New York Post reported last week, the public portions of the hearings will focus exclusively on alleged issues at privately owned housing in the city.

A city FAQ on the hearings includes this answer to the question of whether these hearings are for public housing tenants:

“While these hearings focus on price gouging and living conditions for private-market renters, senior leadership and staff from NYCHA will be on-site to ensure that residents can submit in-apartment repair requests, file heat/hot water complaints, or discuss development-wide issues. In the coming months, our administration will release a housing plan focused on improving housing quality for all New Yorkers, including those in public housing.”

There is an irony in the city’s socialist mayor deprioritizing the complaints of tenants who live in government-owned housing. It also seems a little unfair.

Conditions in buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) are often abysmal. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams described NYCHA as the city’s “worst landlord” last month.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a recent interview with public media outlet GBH that while she did not particularly like the rent control initiative that will, in all likelihood, appear on the Massachusetts state ballot in November, she’ll vote for it anyway.

“It’s not perfect, and it’s not what the City of Boston put forward as a balanced proposal for our city…but I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good in this case, when there is so much urgency and pressure from housing costs on our residents,” said Wu.

The proposed ballot initiative would cap yearly rent increases at 5 percent or annual inflation, whichever is less, at units that are over 10 years old and located in buildings with five or more units.

The initiative has already gathered the requisite number of signatures needed to force the Legislature to consider the rent control proposal. If the Legislature does not pass a related rent control policy, supporters need to gather a smaller, token number of signatures to place the initiative on the state ballot.

As a policy matter, the proposed Massachusetts rent control law would be among the strictest in the country. The annual 5 percent or inflation cap is lower, and the grace period for new construction is shorter than recent statewide rent control policies passed on the West Coast.

The policy also does not allow for “vacancy decontrol”; that’s when landlords are permitted to raise rents to market rates when a unit becomes vacant.

Massachusetts municipalities have experimented with similar rent control policies in the past. For some 25 years, Cambridge capped rents in the low single digits and banned vacancy decontrol.

The voluminous research on that experiment found it reduced rents and housing quality substantially.

The one thing that could be said for Cambridge’s rent control policy is that it did not apply to new construction. The initiative headed for Massachusetts’ November ballot would—after a 10-year grace window.

Should it pass, the result will be diminished supply and diminished quality of housing.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has grokked the lessons of history enough to oppose the rent control ballot initiative. Even Wu seems to understand the risks posed by the proposal headed for the ballot. That she still considers it “good” is lamentable.

• The Federal Reserve will loosen bank rules to encourage more mortgage lending, reports the Financial Times.
• In an odd intersection of zoning and qualified immunity, two areas of government overreach Reason covers frequently, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that two Georgia police officers can’t be sued after arresting an event venue owner for violating noise limits in single-family areas, despite the venue being in a commercial district.
• Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has ordered the New Jersey attorney general to respond to an emergency petition from local elected officials in the Garden State who are suing to block the implementation of a state law that would require them to zone for affordable housing.
• Massachusetts Gov. Healey will still give fire safety grants to communities that are flouting a state law requiring them to zone for more housing. Localities can lose access to state funds for being out of compliance with the state’s upzoning law.
• A Los Angeles man living in a rent-stabilized unit in West Hollywood filed a complaint with the city’s Rent Stabilization Division, claiming he’s been overcharged on rent. After a review, the city determined he’s actually been underpaying his rent.