Crossing Jordan
Commissioner Barbara Jordan’s Workforce Housing Ordinance Is So Ill-Wrought Nobody Wants It — Not Even Those It Is Designed For 

By Rebecca Wakefield

Everyone agrees that there is a shortage of affordable housing in Miami-Dade County. Everyone further agrees that it is someone else’s fault. It’s those bastard developers. Or maybe it is the shiftless underclass, pissing away the American Dream through dead-end jobs in the service industry.

Many partial solutions have been proposed. At the county, the tradition was mostly to turn over much of its housing problems to a couple of departments rife with incestuous relationships. In the city of Miami’s case, the self-described best city manager in the world has hit on the innovative idea of outsourcing his staff to the development industry. Alicia Cuervo Schreiber, an assistant city manager in charge of operations, is moving over to The Related Group this summer. Earlier this year, former city development guru Otto Boudet-Murias made a similar move into private industry before the Miami 21 plan he stewarded could be unveiled.

County Commissioner Barbara Jordan has a different idea. She became vitally interested in a process creaking its way through an internal affordable housing working group the county has had in place for several years. Actually, it was a continuation for her, since she guided the process as an assistant county manager before retiring and running for office.

The group had looked at a number of ideas, generally developer incentives such as tax subsidies or density increases. One of the most promising notions was something called inclusionary zoning, which basically requires developers to build some affordable units as part of their projects, or alternatively to pay into a trust fund that would build the units. This has worked well in many places around the country.

Beyond Jordan’s interest, there was little in the way of political will to lay the tracks for this until late last year, at roughly the same time the fight over moving the urban development boundary began. The way housing advocates tell it, suddenly, a fully formed “workforce housing” ordinance appeared on the commission agenda. This was odd, because none of them had known about it.

Jordan, along with county planning staff and Miami-Dade Housing Agency Director Al Brewster, had conducted a series of meetings mostly with members of the development industry (Lennar Homes, Century Homebuilders and the Builders Association of South Florida, among others), essentially attempting to get them to agree to a workable ordinance.

What they came up with was a proposal to require developers in unincorporated Miami-Dade to set aside 20 percent of new homes for people earning between 65 percent and 140 percent of median income. Builders would get some extra density in exchange. Right now, median income for a family of four in this county is about $55,000. So the range would cover families pulling in between $35,000 and $78,000.
The main problem with the proposal from the advocate side was that it did not spell out the percentages of affordable units that would go to people on the low, middle and high ends of this range. Thus, any developer with an appreciation for profit would naturally build on the high end of the scale. But, do people making $78,000 a year really need affordable housing?

People Acting for Community Together, a coalition of various churches and community groups, put together a handy reference guide to describe who might benefit from this plan based on average salaries. Not surprisingly, the teachers, cops and construction workers often cited as the backbone of our workforce fall squarely in the lower and middle ranges.

Marcos Feldman, a research associate at Florida International University's Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy, also crunched the numbers showing that Jordan’s proposal wouldn’t help most of the workforce behind the rhetoric. The county, he says, never produced statistics showing that the demand for housing in the $220,000 price range outstrips the supply. “It’s really about an economic development move that responds more to the needs of the business community,” he argues. “Frankly, I’m not sure if there’s any benefit at all. You find a number of factors that suggest this ordinance will be useless or highly ineffective.”

Charles Elsesser, an attorney at Florida Legal Services who has vociferously opposed the proposal, is even less delicate. He’s concerned that if it passes, it will signal that high-end “affordable” housing is the best deal local government can wring out of private industry. “The ordinance as currently set up is a disaster,” he says. “It’s worse than useless. It has sucked the air out of any movement toward progressive inclusionary zoning. Once this is on the table, no cities in the county will do any more than this.”

Here is the weird thing. The development industry isn’t happy about Jordan’s ordinance either. Luis Rabell, president of LPR Builders and chairman of the county’s Affordable Housing Advisory Board, told me he’s been following the process for several years. Developers first wanted a process that was entirely voluntary, but Jordan wisely decided that would be a wasted exercise.

Now Rabell says builders believe the ordinance is unworkable because it relies on the beneficence of the community councils to allow “bonus” densities in return for the affordable units. “What happens when the community council says no?” he asks. Only if the commission makes it clear that the councils can’t deny them, would builders be willing to go through the process.

Rabell further contends that the basic problem is the county is trying to solve a problem on the backs of the private sector, without kicking in public dollars. “It’s not that we can’t do it because we’re bad guys,” he says. “It’s just not feasible. If we do something free here, we have to charge more somewhere else. There’s no way we could serve that population without a subsidy. If the county is going to subsidize, we won’t have any problem doing it. Put your money where your mouth is.”

Rabell added that Jordan recently named him to head a new task force that will look at partnerships involving county land and private development. I thought that’s what the county’s urban infill program was all about, but hey, the more task forces, the merrier.

On June 7 at 10 a.m., the commission’s Infrastructure and Land Use Committee will consider Jordan’s proposal. The irresponsible conspiracy theorists I talk to wonder if the political will for inclusionary zoning will evaporate now that the incentive of moving the UDB is gone. Those laying odds should tune in.

I put in a call to Jordan’s office to ask her about all this, but she hadn’t responded by my deadline. It’s possible she was down in the commission chambers dungeon with the rest of their honors, torturing assistant county attorneys in the wake of the news that Mayor Carlos Alvarez can now legally put a referendum on the ballot to shift some of the commissioners’ powers to his office.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.