Image courtesy Pixabay

The City of Sarasota is in the middle of some very important and very difficult zoning text amendments to encourage the building of attainable housing within the city, especially in downtown. It is not an easy piece of legislation and has been years in the making as it started with some very difficult comprehensive plan amendments that required a supermajority vote. We are now on the home stretch of completing this effort, but the city must remain laser-focused on the original intent; this is where well-intentioned mission-creep can essentially nullify an incentive to create affordable housing.

Attainable housing has been identified by almost every level of government as an important priority. This crisis has worsened over the years and has not only affected the private sector workforce, but now the government workforce too. Hiring in both the private and public sectors is an enormous problem. Many workers simply cannot afford to live in the city. 

There has been universal agreement that local government regulation of density and other areas of development has generally been an impediment to housing and greatly contributed to the problem. This agreement stretches across multiple levels of government, academia, and think tanks. The Federal government is now offering grants to local governments to rewrite their codes to accommodate more density and housing. This year, the State government has passed the most significant legislation in decades removing some types of approvals in certain situations from local governments entirely. 

Luckily, the City of Sarasota is ahead of the curve and began efforts years ago to reduce regulation, which was choking off the creation of attainable housing and housing in general. Mandates found in the comprehensive plan and zoning code didn’t give developers many options and it was forcing the market to create luxury units as opposed to allowing for smaller units which lend themselves to workforce housing. 

The city’s zoning text amendments are the implementing tool for changes in the city zoning code to incentivize the creation of attainable housing. Incentivization through Increasing density and providing for the ability to create other types of housing and deregulation have been the key elements of this effort.

The most important thing the City Commission can do in finalizing these zoning text amendments is to make sure they don’t start slipping mandates and requirements into the code and creating complex formulas that have no basis in development financial reality.

Every added complexity and requirement adds cost. Every single one. Whether it be mandating where in a building an attainable unit is created, requiring units of different sizes on each floor, or mandates of which type of attainable unit is created. Each mandate has a cost attached to it, and each mandate is a disincentive to the creation of attainable housing.

The City of Sarasota must remember the ultimate goal is to create more housing units, to push down on the housing market, and to incentivize the creation of attainable housing. End of story. There is no other goal. Social engineering, mandating the types of materials used, mandating the mix of units, mandating amenity access, all of these things create bigger deltas in the market and can cause a developer to not deal with the complexities of it all.

Simplicity in implementing the goal is key to the City being successful in their attainable housing efforts. Less regulation means more attainable units. The Argus Foundation congratulates the City of Sarasota on its efforts to date. We encourage the City Commission to continue forward and finish this effort without adding additional regulation and to remember the original intent of this effort.

Christine Robinson is Executive Director of The Argus Foundation.

Image courtesy Pixabay