“We need another good word, other than ‘mandatory'”: County Commission votes to explore Inclusionary Zoning policies

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their September 19 Special Meeting, the Alachua County Commission voted unanimously to direct staff to bring back ideas for Inclusionary Zoning policies that would apply to developers who request zoning or land use changes, with the goal of adding affordable housing to new developments.

What is Inclusionary Zoning?

On December 13, 2022, the board directed staff to move forward with a contract with the Florida Housing Coalition (FHC) to prepare a feasibility study for Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) in the unincorporated area of Alachua County, and the purpose of this meeting was to hear FHC’s report.

Inclusionary housing is a land use policy that is intended to distribute affordable housing throughout the community as new units are brought online. Local governments can have voluntary or mandatory programs or both; under a mandatory program, the requirements would be based on a particular threshold for development, and if that threshold is surpassed, a percentage of those units would be required to be affordable, based on income levels determined by the Area Median Income (AMI). Recent Florida statutes require governments with Mandatory IZ policies to “fully offset” the cost of developing the affordable units, typically in the form of added density or reduced fees. 

Under Florida statutes, housing is affordable if the monthly rent or mortgage payment is at or below 30% of the household’s income. Extremely low-income households are at or below 30% of AMI, very low-income households are at or below 50%, low-income households are at or below 80%, and moderate-income households are at or below 120% of AMI. 

Florida Housing Coalition presentation

Kody Glazer from FHC gave a presentation to the board about the two reports submitted to the County and said their scope was to “look at Mandatory Inclusionary in Alachua County, given the county’s current housing market, given the county’s current housing needs, and given the county’s current zoning policies.” Glazer said a density bonus is “by far the easiest and most effective way” to comply with the requirement to offset developers’ costs.

Glazer said IZ policies can create a “race to the bottom” scenario in which developers choose to build in areas that don’t have IZ policies; he also said that although Alachua County has a goal to enact policies that serve households below 50% of AMI, IZ is typically most successful when it’s focused on 80%-120% of AMI. 

Glazer said Mandatory IZ works better in markets where there is a greater demand for more dense multifamily housing, and one way they determine that is by looking at whether developers “are constantly pushing up against max densities,” but over the past 10 years, 97% of building permits in Alachua County were for single-family detached housing. However, that presents “a challenge from an affordability perspective… We found that of the 20 most common occupations in Alachua County, only three of them, at the current moment, pay enough for that person to be able to afford median rent in the county.” He added that homeownership is “quickly becoming unaffordable, even for folks up to 120% and above AMI.” He said none of the top 20 most common occupations in the county pay enough to be able to buy a median-priced home.

Glazer said his team spoke with several developers while completing their report, and they asked the developers whether a density bonus would be valuable to them: “And the general answer we got was ‘no,’ because they’re content with building their detached single-family product.”

Proposed solutions

Moving into proposed solutions, Glazer said his team is “not confident…that a density bonus, which, again, is the most effective way to meet state law requirements, [will work in Alachua County]… If you have an IZ program that is built on the density bonus being the incentive for cost offsets, it just may be a challenge. And so you may be forced to actually pay developers in cash, waive fees, to make IZ work.”

Glazer said it was possible that could change in five or ten years, so “the County can prepare for that future by amending your policies today.” Glazer said, however, that the County could implement other ideas, such as allowing developers who are building mixed-use developments to provide affordable housing instead of commercial space. He also suggested density bonuses targeted to specific census tracts.

Glazer thought the Infrastructure Surtax passed last November was “a tremendous step in the right direction” because the funds can be used to purchase land to be used for affordable housing. He also presented a list of options to promote affordable housing without implementing mandatory IZ and pointed out that a mandatory IZ policy will require staffing to make sure the affordable units stay affordable for the promised amount of time.

“Any action is good action on this issue”

After concluding his presentation, Glazer said, “I think any action is good action on this issue.”

In response to a question from Commissioner Mary Alford, Glazer said Palm Beach County has “by far the most successful Inclusionary Zoning program in the state of Florida.”

Chair Anna Prizzia said, “I would agree with you that the idea of Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning is probably not feasible for us right now because of the lack of demand for density.” However, she favored “a limited Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning policy with any request for changes in our Comprehensive Plan or zoning. So if somebody wants to do a land use change, if somebody wants to do a rezoning or any other sort of change to the existing rules of the road for their development, that’s when it would trigger the conversation about affordable housing, as a part of the exchange for that… I would love to see that be… policy so that there’s an understanding that that would be an expectation instead of an option.” She also favored asking staff to evaluate whether it makes sense to trade out the remaining commercial density in a development like Celebration Pointe for residential density that includes affordable housing.

In response to a question from Commissioner Ken Cornell about which counties are making the new law work, Glazer said Palm Beach County’s program has been successful because “there is a real demand there for very high-density multi-family housing… Developers really need to go through the inclusionary program to make their deals work at all… [It’s] just a very different market than Alachua County.”

Cornell favored watching “what is working around the state and see if we can implement some of those things.”

Chestnut: “If we don’t make it mandatory, it won’t get done”

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut was interested in creating mixed-income developments “because if we don’t make it mandatory, it won’t get done… So at some point, we have to do something mandatory to make sure that that happens, that we create those communities that fits [sic] everyone, not just one particular income level.” He said he didn’t want to “pick on GRU, but having high electrical rates makes it very, very difficult for folks that are very, very low income.” He also favored creating developments “where folks can see the value of homeownership, not just renting. Homeownership is the key. To me, that’s the American Dream, is homeownership. And it’s also wealth-building.”

Prizzia said many planned development types give developers extra density, and that’s why they may not be interested in a density bonus. She favored creating “some level of mandatory affordable housing in that TOD [Transit-Oriented Development], TND [Traditional Neighborhood Development], to begin with… If they want a rezoning and they want more density, they have to [add affordable housing]. If they want a land use change, they have to do it.”  She said it made sense to her to use Infrastructure Surtax funds to offset impact fees or commercial density and require TODs and TNDs to “put in a mix of housing.”

In response to a question from Cornell about the importance of working with cities, Glazer said, “I think coordination between all the cities in Alachua County is extremely important.” He gave Leon County and Tallahassee as examples of local governments that have ordinances that are “exactly the same for both jurisdictions.” He said Tallahassee has required IZ since 2001, but developers were building outside the city limits to avoid the requirements and then annexing into the city once their property was already approved and built. He said a joint program with the City of Gainesville “makes a lot of sense.”

Prizzia: “Important for us to have that same conversation with Alachua and Newberry”

Prizzia said, “I honestly think it’s as important for us to have that same conversation with Alachua and Newberry because they are the cities that are also developing really fast. And they’re becoming sort of bedroom communities for Gainesville for affordability, if you will… They’re going to need that affordable housing, and they have the opportunity to lead in that area and be examples to cities around the state about how to do that.” She suggested sharing the report with the smaller cities and discussing the issue during joint meetings. 

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler added, “In addition to looking at Alachua and Newberry, High Springs has got it going on in terms of Habitat Homes that they’re putting up there.”

Motion

Cornell made a motion to have staff bring back recommendations based on the report and identify where the County’s policies are different from the City of Gainesville and other cities in the county to avoid the “race to the bottom.” Commissioners clarified that their intent is to establish IZ policies that apply to developers who ask for land use and zoning changes. Alford seconded the motion.

Prizzia pointed out, though, that Chestnut wanted to see more mandatory IZ policies, and she favored a “missing middle district evaluation” to look in the unincorporated area and the smaller cities to find “heat spots” for development, where they could add targeted Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning. “Once we have that evaluation, take that heat map… and think about what missing middle districts across the county might look like, and see if we can get buy-in from our small cities and the City of Gainesville to collaborate with us on that [so] everybody has that same requirement,” she said.

Alford asked, “Would we also be considering potentially having Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning when there was a land use change or something?” and Prizzia said they would. Alford continued, “So we’re not doing away with mandatory totally, but we are not making it mandatory across the county. I’m good with that.”

Wheeler: “We need another good word, other than ‘mandatory’… You wordsmiths come up with a good word.”

Wheeler said, “We need another good word, other than ‘mandatory,'” and Prizzia replied, “I mean, it’s not technically mandatory because it’s voluntary, because they’re voluntarily coming forward for a land use change or rezoning. So it’s actually not mandatory. It’s just saying that one of the things we expect when you bring forward your land use change or rezoning is that you’re including affordable housing in that project.” Wheeler told staff, “You wordsmiths come up with a good word.”

Prizzia said some developers are already including affordable housing because it’s “important to [the County]… I don’t think it’s gonna be a problem, necessarily. I just think we’re gonna have to get creative about how we do it, to make sure that it does that missing middle thing.”

Following public comment, which largely supported Mandatory IZ, Prizzia said, “There is a lot of growth coming, and in this report, we have a very powerful tool to limit growth in this county and to protect our county to being the county that we love and to value all of the things that we care about, from farming and conservation land and our springs and our natural areas to the urbanized development, the culture that we have here, and that is our urban cluster line.” She said she was “not interested in the permeability of that urban cluster line; that urban cluster line is what will drive density bonus interest.”

The motion passed unanimously.