by James McClister

A proposal to amend the Miami Comprehensive Neighborhood Plan (MCNP) aims to to create new incentives for affordable building – something the city desperately needs.

The amendment, which is sponsored by District Three Commissioner Frank Carollo and due for a reading by city council today, Jan. 12, is a response to changing local conditions in Miami; namely, the city has become far too expensive.

The proposed amendment references a study from New York University’s Furman Center that “shows the city is the least affordable to the median renter of the eleven (11) metropolitan areas studied.” The other metropolitan areas in the study were Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

In our own reporting, we’ve noted concerns over Miami’s lacking affordable housing stock, including a report that compared home price and wage growth since the market’s bottoming out. In Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties, home prices have risen at least 105 percent since bottoming, while wages have increased 11, 10 and a paltry 3 percent.

A doubling in density

The changes to the MCNP – a plan the City adopted in 1989 as a means to guide development – seek to further the legislation’s long-standing goal of “encourage(ing) affordable housing in appropriate locations within the city.” Specifically, the amendment proposes three new objectives by which the city can ensure the refilling of affordable housing stocks. They include:

Five percent of the new housing stock to be built over the next five years will be reserved for mixed income developments.

Forty percent of the housing stock built under affordable and attainable mixed-income programs over the next five years will be reserved for housing low-income elderly households.

Forty percent of the housing stock built under affordable and attainable mixed-income programs over the next five years will be reserved for workforce housing, as described in the applicable land development regulations.

To incentive builders to meet these objectives, the amendment goes on to outline density bonuses for builders, including a 100-percent bonus for residential developments with a minimum of 10 percent of its units reserved for “extremely low-income housing,” and a 50-percent bonus for residential developments with a minimum of 5 percent of its units reserved for “extremely low-income housing.”

Specific examples of the density bonuses for low, medium and high density multifamily residential developments can be found in the report, as well as examples for central business district developments.