Governor Ron DeSantis has pledged to provide relief by the end of the year to apartment building owners facing higher costs for mandatory safety inspections of their buildings, and he plans to set aside funds for future repairs.
But leading members of the House and Senate are not supporting a special session to make changes, leaving the Dec. 31 deadline for compliance in effect for apartment buildings larger than two stories that turned 30 years old before July 1, 2022.
Condo associations must file a so-called Milestone Inspection report, which determines whether buildings show signs of significant structural deterioration. They must also obtain a separate report called a Strategic Integrity Reserve Study. It estimates the remaining useful life of components such as roofs, structural elements, fire protection systems, plumbing, electrical systems, exterior painting and waterproofing, and windows, and determines how much money associations must fund for future repairs or replacements.
Spokespeople for counties and cities in South Florida say mandatory inspection reports are coming in and that so far, none have revealed safety issues that would force owners to evacuate their units.
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Pompano Beach has identified 73 buildings that are still facing deadlines, five of which have completed inspections and received certification that they are safe for continued use.
Hollywood did not provide the number of buildings that need to be inspected in the city, but said 78 buildings have provided evidence that inspections have been completed. “The majority need some level of repair,” a spokeswoman said. Hallandale Beach said 28 buildings need inspections by the deadline, and eight have completed them.
Of the 117 buildings in Deerfield Beach that were required to undergo inspections, none have filed a report, according to information provided to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. A city spokesperson pointed out that condo associations that own those buildings did not receive notice of the requirement until July or August.
In Fort Lauderdale, inspections have been conducted at seven of the 37 residential buildings that must meet the Dec. 31 deadline, a city spokeswoman said.
A spokeswoman for West Palm Beach said 51 associations were required to undergo inspections. Of those, 12 have filed reports, the spokeswoman said. Boca Raton has its own program in 2021. The deadlines are different.
“We are extremely blessed”
Mike Santiago, who oversees inspections for the firm Universal Engineering Sciences, said his company has completed more than 350 inspections in the state, with another 100 to 150 underway or under contract. Only 5 percent of the firm’s initial inspections turned up signs of structural deterioration that would warrant more detailed investigations, he said.
Only one inspection revealed defects that needed immediate repair, he said. Steel support columns in a beachfront building were badly corroded by water ingress, he said.
“We’ve been very blessed,” Santiago told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “We haven’t seen many buildings that have had a lot of problems.”
Meanwhile, elderly residents of older apartment buildings are tense about what they see as an approaching tidal wave of cost increases.
Rising homeowners’ association insurance costs have already driven up monthly dues, said Wendell Ensey, president of Century Village in Pembroke Pines.
“Since 2020 to now, the unit owners in my association have seen their costs go up by $120 to $150 a month,” Ensey said. “And people on fixed incomes — there could be a single woman who gets $1,200 a month in Social Security and all of a sudden she’s paying $700 a month or $800 a month in maintenance. She’s having trouble eating.”
Dennis Warren, who says he owns dozens of apartments that he rents in the Orlando area, says inspections alone cost associations tens of thousands of dollars. One apartment association where he owns units pays $60,000 for its investigation, he said, and said the effort to protect apartment owners “is actually counterproductive to their quality of life.”
Ensey said he saw a quote of $32,000 to inspect a community increase to $50,000 six months later. “That’s extortionate to me,” he said.
Santiago acknowledged that a shortage of engineers and architects to conduct the inspections is driving up costs. While his company’s costs have not increased more than 5% to 10%, he said other companies “certainly” will raise their prices as the deadline approaches.
Associations can miss the Dec. 31 inspection deadline, he said, as long as they have signed a contract to have an inspection done.
No sign of extension of inspection period
There is currently no sign that House and Senate leaders are willing to extend the Dec. 31 deadline, signed after the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, which killed 98 residents.
Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said in mid-August that she would not call a special session before the end of the year. In a letter to fellow senators, Passidomo said that committee meetings after the elections offer the “best opportunity” to secure “analysis, collaboration and input” on the issue before the regular session that begins next March.
The new leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives have also resisted calls for a special session, telling a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald that they don’t want to rush into changes if safety isn’t the main focus.
Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Miami Democrat and a leading spokesman on apartment complexes, said bluntly: “There will be no special session.”
Pizzo criticized the idea that older apartment owners would not be able to afford the high special taxes.
“Thirty, sometimes forty years have passed, and we see the same person who was not 80, but 40, joining and voting to give up reserves and never putting money aside for repairs or replacements, never asking for it. Very often, he may have been on the board or in office and wanted all the economies of scale and the benefits of multifamily living, but without the burdens,” he said.
DeSantis called on lawmakers to come up with ideas to prevent fixed-income apartment owners from losing their homes if they can’t afford higher appraisals that result from the cost of inspections or repairs they’ve identified. But the governor himself ruled out calling a special session for now, saying that without a plan “on paper,” lawmakers would be “running around like headless chickens.”
Ideas to keep seniors in their units
Several South Florida lawmakers said they are still considering ways to ease the financial burden on homeowners.
Chip LaMarca, a Republican who represents eastern Broward County communities from Deerfield Beach to Fort Lauderdale, said finding a solution “is not as easy as some have suggested.”
“I know many of our residents are concerned, which is understandable, but the people of Florida deserve a solution that balances their safety with affordability,” LaMarca said.
Ideas that have emerged from conversations with apartment complex residents and colleagues in the Legislature, he said, include a revolving loan fund for unit owners who can’t immediately contribute their full share of repair costs and expanding home improvement loan programs like PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy). PACE programs allow homeowners to borrow money for improvements with no credit check and no down payment. But they have drawn criticism for securing repayment through liens on homes and adding loan payments to homeowners’ property tax bills.
Rep. Robin Bartleman, who represents southwestern Broward County, says she is working with a committee of four apartment complexes in her district to develop ideas she wants to bring to Tallahassee.
Help is needed, she said, for “the 90-year-old who has paid off her mortgage but can’t pay her club dues and can’t find a second job at her age.”
Rep. Dan Daley, a Democrat whose district includes Coral Springs, said extending the deadline to fund reserves could help seniors on fixed incomes keep their homes. “I also think you have some good operators, boards and managers who have done a good job and taken good care of their properties and prioritized upgrades, improvements and replacements,” he said. “Those folks shouldn’t be penalized for trying to bring everybody up to par.”
Other Florida residents are also coming up with ideas.
Business consultant Louis Orloff, founder of Orloff Advisors LLC in St. Petersburg, proposed freeing up money for inspections and repairs by having the state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp. finance property insurance premiums for up to five years.
Wendell Ensey, president of Century Village in Pembroke Pines, proposes that associations be given three to five years to set aside reserves for repairs identified during milestone inspections.
“It took 30 to 40 years for some of these problems to flare up and they want to fix it within a year,” Ensey said. “They want new reserves created — full reserves that are obligated — and they want it by the end of this year,” Ensey said.
But Passidomo said in her August letter that homeowners associations will not be required to collect all the funds “necessary to account for the remaining life of every spare part” — such as electrical and plumbing systems — “by 2025.”
“Unless there is an immediate safety concern, the law does not require reserves to be fully funded upon completion of the reserve study,” she wrote. “The amount to be set aside is calculated based on the estimated remaining useful life and estimated replacement cost of the item.”
If the cost to replace a roof over 10 years is $100,000, she wrote, the association is not obligated to immediately fund the full $100,000. “Instead, the association must set aside sufficient funds each year to have the required funding available at the time of anticipated repairs.”
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer affairs for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.
