Gainesville Residents File Petition Challenging City of Gainesville’s Elimination of Single-Family Zoning
Press release from Gainesville Neighborhood Voices, Inc.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – On November 9, 2022, longtime Gainesville residents Margaret H. (Peggy) Carr and Faye L. Williams filed a petition with the State of Florida Department of Administrative Hearings challenging the City of Gainesville’s recent Comprehensive Plan amendments eliminating single-family zoning across the City.
The amendments, passed by a narrow 4-3 vote of the City Commission, eliminate across the City, the single-family future land use designation that allows a maximum of 8 dwelling units per acre. They replace the single-family category with “Residential Low Density,” which allows 15 dwelling units per acre–nearly double the previous maximum density.
The petition challenging this action by the City Commission alleges that the plan amendments are “not in compliance” because they are:
- Not supported by, or are contrary to, the City’s data and analysis, in violation of Section 163.3177(1)(f) of Florida Statutes, and
- Inconsistent with Section 163.3177(1) because they are internally inconsistent with and violate existing provisions of the City of Gainesville Comprehensive Plan.
The petition notes that Alachua County and the Florida Department of Transportation have challenged the City’s lack of appropriate data and analysis, while the State’s Department of Economic Opportunity recommended the City of Gainesville withdraw the amendment, for similar reasons.
The petition identifies more than a dozen portions of the City’s current Comprehensive Plan that the amendments violate. It notes that the City’s most recent, required assessment of its own Comprehensive Planning effort was done more than a decade ago and that the City’s Housing Data & Analysis Report, dated March 4, 2002, and posted on the City’s website, is more than twenty years old. Finally, the petition notes that the Comprehensive Plan amendments do not require that any affordable housing be provided.
Land Use Attorney Ralf Brookes of Cape Coral, Florida filed the petition on behalf of Carr and Williams.
The full petition can be found here.
Carr and Williams’ petition was supported by Gainesville Neighborhood Voices, Inc.
When a City (Gville) and a County ( Alachua) and Utility (GRU) purposely a hell bent to rule thier regressive , prejudice failed agenda down the taxpayers( not floating voters) throats and are audited by the State and ordered to Cease and Desist, can we leave the everything east of the Mini Kenny I75/26 homeless hotel and start Springs County ? When they are broke and no options we may get a break. Just cannot understand that 1% sur tax that keeps getting voted in. Just how much have they taken in since its conception and how much have they spent? Odds are it cost 3 to 1 to implement this tax .that should be part of the basic taxes.
Landowners should be able to do whatever they want with their private property. That’s what “freedom” means. I’m done with this woke “single family zoning” BS. Zoning = Marxism!
Well if *trust* Ward, Eastman and Book, the ordinance will be repealed in Jan. anyway. Ward and Eastman would have no political futures otherwise. We already know Saco doesn’t have a longterm thinking ability.
Hopefully the first lawsuit of many. The mayor and commissioners work for US, the voters, even though they seem to forget that. This was clearly not wanted by the citizens.
Anyone supporting this change needs to go move to New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Portland, or any other liberal utopia instead of ruining our city. We don’t want to live like rats crammed in an urban hellscape.