Florida’s Live Local Act is back on the state legislative docket, less than a year after it was put in place to remove some red tape for developers and allow taller projects to provide more housing. This time the law faces restrictions on the very construction the measure encouraged.

Senate Bill 328 and the accompanying House Bill 1239 were filed by Miami-area state senator Alexis Calatayud and representative Vicki Lopez just before the start of the 60-day session earlier this year. It revises language in the law to sort out some confusion on the issue of whether communities can demand that developers change their plans or face rejection of the proposals.

The Live Local Act garnered bipartisan support before taking effect in July, overriding local zoning rules and height and density restrictions with the goal of spurring more housing development to eventually reduce rents. State officials heralded it as a bold step forward in addressing the rising cost of living in Florida and providing affordable housing in a business-friendly manner that includes tax incentives.

Major parts of the law allow residential and mixed-use development on land zoned for commercial and industrial use, and it provides funding for low interest loans and other tax incentives for developers as long as 40% of a project’s residential portion includes affordable housing. But the proposed changes would restrict development on industrial land on waterfront properties zoned industrial or that are adjacent to ports and they would reintroduce height restrictions on properties adjacent to neighborhoods with single-family houses.

The changing law shows how lawmakers across the country face difficulties trying to combat affordable housing shortages while balancing the needs of communities and developers. As other states and areas implement rent control measures to tackle affordable housing, Florida's Live Local Act is taking the opposite approach by banning rent control across the state outright and making it easier for developers to build more housing, helping to ease rents.

The amendments would help address the confusion over the initial law by spelling out the restrictions that developers still have to deal with in any respective jurisdiction, including mandated building setbacks, buffers and parking, said Anthony De Yurre, a partner at Miami law firm Bilzin Sumberg, in an interview with CoStar News.

Even with the law's aims to ease local rules, projects are still in some ways "subject to that local jurisdiction," said De Yurre, who works in the law firm's land development and government relations group. Yet at the same time, the power of the local jurisdictions has been pared back by the state law, adding to the confusion.

That's not the only source of confusion and debate. Another issue of dispute is what exactly counts as affordable housing units. The Live Local Act uses existing Florida law that classifies an affordable unit as having a monthly rent or mortgage payment no more than 30% of the area's median household income. For Live Local Act projects, that means that 40% of units needs to be reserved for tenants making no more than 120% of the area's median income.

Clearing the confusion could lead to more affordable housing that the law was initially intended to spur. One success story so far that the amendments seek to make more common is in the north Miami-Dade suburb of Miami Gardens, where Asi Cymbal, chairman of real estate developer Cymbal DLT, is wrapping up construction of the Laguna Gardens luxury apartment complex.

After applying the act's tax savings to the entire project, Laguna Gardens' 341 units can rent at significantly discounted prices, Cymbal said. They include higher-end units that come equipped with the features of luxury projects but are offered at more affordable prices, he told CoStar News.

"We decided to offer all 341 units to the community and artificially lower the rents of all these otherwise market-rate units because of the tax savings and because of our philosophy that we believe luxury should be attainable to a wider swath of the community," Cymbal said.

Other projects also have sprouted in greater Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville and other markets utilizing the Live Local Act. While renters such as those on Laguna Gardens’ waiting list may be receptive to the new development, the reaction is mixed among local governments that have seen some of their most effective tools for regulating development scaled back.

“One thing that is a given when you get local elected officials together from any municipality, and it doesn't matter whether you're a big municipality or small, rich or poor, they all agree that state preemption is a bad thing," said Rachel Streitfeld, a land use and zoning attorney with Caldera Law, a boutique law firm. That's the "common denominator" in the discontent with the initial law, said Streitfeld, who is also a city commissioner for North Bay Village, an island neighborhood in Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

State preemption, and the reactions of local officials to projects they legally have no choice but to approve, have led to some pushback to the law — and complications and delays in projects the law spurred.

In Doral, a suburb in west Miami-Dade, city officials implemented a 6-month development moratorium in August as the city figured out administrative procedures for new Live Local Act projects and as a response to plans filed for a project called Oasis at Doral. The proposed 630-unit mixed-use development with 185,000 square feet of retail and 110,000 square feet of office space was proposed by developer The Apollo Cos. at an existing office park.

A month later, the city and developer reached an agreement after the height of three residential towers at the proposed project were reduced and the city allowed the project’s application to proceed outside of the moratorium. The project is still in the planning stage.

The situation was similar in Miami Beach, where Jesta Group announced a 30-story redevelopment of the historic Art Deco-style Clevelander Hotel, leading then-Mayor Dan Gelber to call the project “the worst idea ever" after public complaints that the development was too big and out of character with the area.

Anthony O’Brien, senior managing director at Jesta Group, said in an emailed statement to CoStar News that the project was unique because of its historic nature, but ultimately the plans filed with the city were for an 18-story tower, even though they had the right to pursue 30 floors under the law.

The struggles faced by these first few projects under the Live Local Act matter, said O’Brien. “Every developer that I know wants to leverage the Act to build new projects … but I would say 90% of them are on the sidelines right now watching closely to see if the first projects proceed smoothly under the Act.”

While testy exchanges between developers and municipalities aren’t exactly new, Live Local Act projects have for the most part managed to avoid entering outright legal battles in the courts. But that might be changing. Officials in the Village of Bal Harbour instructed the municipal attorney to investigate the possibility of a development moratorium after the owner of Bal Harbour Shops announced a multimillion-dollar mixed-use expansion that includes a 17-story boutique hotel and 600 residential units.

Since then, the Bal Harbour Shops owner filed a lawsuit against the city, asking the Florida Circuit Court to force the city’s approval of the project. The owner's 161-page complaint alleges that Bal Harbour has come up with new restrictions to prevent the development from moving forward, highlighting a city memo that said building workforce housing would risk the city's “standing as a unique and elegant community,” and its “role as a luxury destination,” as well as the safety and security of residents and the neighborhood.

The changes proposed in SB 328 and HB 1239 would clarify specific regulations that local jurisdictions can and cannot use to regulate projects proposed under the Live Local Act. The changes would preserve industrial-zoned land along the waterfront or by ports for their original purpose and clarifies that developers are entitled to the highest floor-area ratio, or a measure of how much can be built on a plot of land — the floor-to-the-area — that a city or county allows.

The clarification around floor-area ratios removes a potential objection local officials had used in opposing Live Local Act projects. That was exemplified when officials in the city of Miami Beach argued that Jesta Group’s Clevelander redevelopment exceeded the floor-area ratio allowed on the city’s Art Deco district along Ocean Drive.

Changes are needed to the law to exclude industrial land if it is waterfront or next to a port, according to proponents of the amendments, because that use must be protected from residential development. The property market around Miami is bound by the ocean to the east and the Everglades to the west, making scarce large plots of land that industrial development usually requires. Industrial uses are vital to the economy of South Florida, a region that relies on international shipping and logistics and is home to some of the country's busiest seaports and airports.

Industrial properties hit an all-time low vacancy of 1.6% in the fourth quarter as rents edged higher than $17 per square foot, the highest recorded so far, according to JLL's quarterly market report for South Florida.

Live Local Act changes also reintroduce height limits under specific instances. The new language specifies that if the project is adjacent on two sides of a single-family neighborhood with at least 25 contiguous single-family homes, the developer is limited to 150% of the maximum height within a quarter-mile radius, or three stories, whichever is greater.

Additional restrictions include prohibiting projects within a quarter mile of an airport runway or any airport noise zone, or within a quarter mile of a military installation. Also included is a 20% reduction in parking requirements for mixed-use projects located within a half-mile of a train or bus station in a pedestrian-friendly area or within 600 feet of a garage, parking lot or on-street parking.

Despite the law's potential limitations, the act will remain a useful tool to get more affordable housing across the state for developers that are “serious” about workforce housing, said Streitfeld, the attorney with Caldera Law and commissioner for North Bay Village.

While the Senate passed SB 328 this week, the House version of the bill remains in committee. Regardless of whether the proposed amendments will get additional alterations in the Florida House, Live Local Act's changes seem poised to pass, said Streitfeld, the land use and zoning attorney. The state's 60-day session ends March 8.

“Given that the sponsors are in the majority party … I expect some version will pass in March,” she said.