2 days ago
Orlando Unlocked: Dyer to outline housing plan in State of the City
Orlando currently faces a housing shortage and in another decade, the need for more apartments and houses will be critical as 90,000 new residents are expected to call the City Beautiful home by 2035.
Mayor Buddy Dyer is expected to outline a package of incentives, fee waivers and flexible zoning rules on Tuesday at his annual State of the City speech. The 'Orlando Unlocked' policy package aims to encourage the creation of new housing, from small garage apartments to large complexes with hundreds of units.
Since 2020, the city has faced a shortage of approximately 9,400 apartments, houses, and other units. And with the population surge expected, about 46,000 more units will be needed to keep up.
'Our Orlando Unlocked initiative helps increase density in ways that strengthen neighborhoods enabling granny flats, townhomes and apartments to be built in more locations across the city,' a draft of the mayor's speech reads. 'Because when we expand supply, we not only lower costs, we give people the power to choose where and how they want to live.'
The speech is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Plaza Live.
The city is seeking to increase housing stock across all price points, in a region where prices hit a record high last year. The median sale price in Central Florida last December was $380,000, a figure that includes single-family houses, condominiums, duplexes and townhomes.
But city officials also aim to offer incentives, fee waivers, reductions in parking requirements and variances to create more affordable places to live. For example, the city offered a 15% parking reduction and a school impact fee waiver totaling about $2 million to 52 at Park, a new apartment complex at West Colonial Drive and John Young Parkway.
The neighborhood is under construction and includes 300 units for residents who make at or below 60% of the area's median income of about $69,000.
Other policies seek to speed up permitting and review processes to get shovels in the ground quicker. For example, most proposals of 100 units or fewer wouldn't require public hearings.
'The biggest role I think we see the city having is helping on the supply realm,' said David Barilla, the executive director of Orlando's Community Redevelopment Agency.
Activists have been pushing city leaders to go further and outright eliminate minimum parking requirements. they contend parking costs developers between $3,000 and $5,000 per space and, in turn, boosts housing costs. City officials are drafting an ordinance, though its passage is far from certain, the Orlando Sentinel reported previously.
In recent years, city officials reduced parking requirements downtown and waived them altogether in one stretch between Interstate 4 and Rosalind Avenue.
Chief Planner Elisabeth Dang said the Unlock Orlando campaign is designed for a range of plans, from those proposed by the largest developers down to those adding a garage apartment to a neighborhood property.
'We're putting all that together to try to hopefully encourage some people who have been on the sidelines because they just don't know how to get started, to participate and start some new projects we might not see otherwise,' she said.
A fact sheet prepared by the city states that about 9,200 units are under construction across the city and about 18,000 are approved or in permit review.
The Orlando region — from Sanford to Kissimmee — is one of the nation's toughest markets for affordable housing. A report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found the area is the sixth worst, and that only 19 affordable units per 100 extremely low-income renters are available.
While rent prices have cooled this year from COVID-era surges, prices are still higher than many working-class renters can afford. The average studio runs $1,679, down 1% from last year, and the average 2-bedroom unit costs $1,795, a 15% decrease from last year, according to
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