Several years ago, Public Housing and Community Development along with Miami-Dade County's Planning Department unveiled the regulations on their new Workforce Housing Development Program. With this regulation, anyone with a certain size property within unincorporated Miami-Dade County, can turn a single-family home into a duplex by adding an accessory unit.
I, a residential architect in Miami, was one of the speakers and my drawings for the "Expandable House" are on display behind the speakers. In the photo I am in the top right-hand corner. In the second row is Commissioner Barbara Jordan and Michael Liu, the former director of Public Housing and Community Development. In the third row is Rosa Davis from the Planning Department and Christine Velazquez from Department of Environmental and Resource Management. These are the people who are working on the regulations for this program.
Even though the program really works well for large development projects of 20 units or more, there are opportunities for many people who want to develop single-family and duplexes for workforce housing. In most cases, a present RU-1 lot can be converted to duplex zoning without a public hearing. The county requires an application and the zoning change will be granted on a case by case basis. This law as in place prior to the new law where the country really wants you to build these accessory units. And it is up to you whether you want to build them as rentals or for your family. You can read about this newer law here.
Mr. Michael Liu, the former director of Public Housing and Community Development, said we needed about 300,000 units of workforce housing in the county. Workforce housing is geared to people who make between 60% and 140% of area median income.
And now with the Biden and the federal government granting additional funding to areas that reduce the amount of single-family zoning, there will be a push to grant more of these zoning adjustments so as to create more duplexes within single-family developments.
You can read an entire PowerPoint presentation on this topic here.
If you are interested in purchasing land and developing using this program, and want to learn more, shoot me an email or call me, Maria Luisa Castellanos, R.A., at 305-439-7898, or email me at MLC@UnitedArchs.com , and we can set up an appointment to visit your house. The first meeting is complimentary, if your project qualifies.