‘Your first home you buy is never the house of your dreams, unless you’re an NBA player.’
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Miami-Dade needs to make it easier and more profitable for homebuilders to construct properties within economic reach of first-time homebuyers, and that means allowing the development of smaller units within the urban corridor, according to U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds.
One way to do that is to shorten the design-to-build timeline so shovels can hit the ground and housing can rise faster, said Donalds, the Republican nominee for Governor, citing a National Association of Home Builders study that found 26.4% of a new home’s cost is based on government-related expenses like permitting.
But zoning also falls to counties and municipalities — though state lawmakers in recent years have eroded local controls in the name of safety and housing affordability.
Donalds said Miami-Dade should remove some of its zoning restraints, which in turn would lead to lower homebuilding costs, more housing inventory and, consequently, more acquirable homes.
“Zoning — this is something we’re going to have to work on with local governments, especially here in Miami-Dade,” he said. “Miami-Dade is going to have to get creative about how you allot for housing in some of the urban corridors.”
Donalds clarified that he doesn’t mean developers should get carte blanche on when, where and how big to build properties. In fact, he said, developers building too big is part of the problem.
“Your first home you buy is never the house of your dreams, unless you’re an NBA player,” he said.
“No disrespect to those guys. I’m happy for them. My first apartment was 925 square feet, a second-story condo, (and) my first house I bought out of foreclosure — three bedrooms, two baths, I think 1,900 square feet. So, when young people are going into the housing market, if we tell a young person that the only way in is to buy a four-bedroom, two-bath in the Gables, that’s not how people typically start. Everybody has to work their way up, (and) what government should do is make sure that the first step is easier to obtain.”
Making homes more plentiful in Florida, which saw almost 201,200 new residents arrive last year — still a lot, but markedly down from the 2022 peak of nearly 599,000 — is also key, he continued.
“If you can now have construction projects come on the market that are cheaper, that actually pushes down the resale value of existing homes,” he said.
“Let me just give an example to everybody. If a new car is cheaper than a used car, which car do you buy? You buy new. The used car price is always cheaper than the new car price because everybody knows they’re not going to pay higher for a used car than you will a new car. Same thing in housing. If you can structurally push down the cost of housing because you reform permitting and planning in our state, making it cheaper to deliver product, then you also have downward pressure on the resale market and housing that makes it easier for young families to be able to put together the savings they need to come through that way.”
Across South Florida, cities have spent recent years using their zoning codes as a levee against new housing.
Miami Beach moved to rewrite building height limits within a mile of its historic districts — a boundary that would capture most of South Beach — after a developer proposed a 30-story tower on the Clevelander site, and the city is now being sued over its handling of a Live Local Act project at the vacant Bancroft Hotel on Collins Avenue.
Beach officials also threatened litigation over HB 399, the land-use law Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March, with Commissioner Alex Fernandez arguing it strips residents of public input.
Farther south, Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay each adopted their own Live Local review ordinances layering locally written compliance requirements onto applications the state meant to fast-track, and both joined Pinecrest, Homestead and Florida City in a coalition that beat back a county Rapid Transit Zone ordinance that would have set blanket density along the South Dade TransitWay.
Lawmakers responded by tightening the screws. Miami Republican state Rep. Mike Redondo, sponsoring this year’s Live Local expansion, told colleagues that continued local resistance is precisely why the preemptions keep growing.
“I constantly hear about this need for affordable housing. And we have this problem, NIMBY — ‘not in my backyard.’ It’s a real thing,” he said in March.
Donalds, who faces Democrat David Jolly, a former Congressman, on the Nov. 3 ballot, delivered his remarks during a campaign stop Monday at the Chabad of Kendall and Pinecrest, where he spent an hour taking questions from attendees on a variety of subjects, including vaccines, immigration, affordability, condo safety and education.
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