ORLANDO, Fla. — As Orange County debates a possible rent control measure to ease the ongoing housing crisis in Central Florida, area leaders are looking at other ways to fit more people in.
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Critics say one reason driving the short supply of homes is Orlando’s strict zoning. Many desirable areas only allow one house to be built per lot, including neighborhoods close to downtown like College Park and Lake Como.
R-1 zoning, which historians say is a relic of the segregation era, is often difficult to remove due to local opposition. Residents who move to a neighborhood because of its quiet streets full of single-family homes, tend to be resistant to denser construction. They also tend to be wealthier and more politically involved.
After a years-long battle, California wiped-out single-family zoning in urban areas to ease the crisis in famously sprawling Los Angeles. Even Florida’s most passionate politicians have yet to indicate they’d support a similar measure.
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Recognizing this, Orlando city leaders allow most property owners to build an Accessory Dwelling Unit, or ADU, on their properties. Commonly called garage apartments or granny flats, they allow a second family to live on the same property without a zoning change, so long as the apartment is smaller than the original. Apartments like these provide passive income to homeowners or give relatives a place to stay.
“It can fill a need in a part of town where you can’t find 5acres for a large development,” Orlando Planning Division Manager Elisabeth Dang described.
However, demand for ADUs in Orlando has been underwhelming, to say the least. The city government estimates that it receives 100 applications per year — far too few to ease the ongoing crisis.
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Some residents said the cost of permitting an ADU deterred them from building one, but city staff now say the estimations they received may have been a mistake.
For an unspecified period of time, the city’s online calculator estimated that permitting fees for an ADU reached up to $20,000, including building fees and various impact fees. Such a price — coupled with the $100,000 to $200,000 needed to construct an ADU – meant it would be an extra year or more before a property owner’s investment could be recouped through rent.
However, city staff said their calculator included fees that shouldn’t have been listed — chiefly, the school impact fee that accounted for almost half the cost. In reality, ADU permits should only total in the low thousands. The price tag includes sewer fees, transportation fees and parks fees, along with the building permit.
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“We will be working on correcting our estimating tool for ADUs to be in line with the correct impact fee rates and the elimination of the school impact fee,” a city spokeswoman said.
It’s unclear how many people interested in building an ADU were turned off by the estimation tool before approaching the city, though the number is still likely far too low to dramatically change the course of the housing crunch.
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Data shows Central Florida would have to double the pace of housing construction to accommodate all of the families moving to the region annually. While 24,000 families move to Orange County, only approximately 12,000 new units are built every year, a consultant’s report said. A fraction of those are considered “affordable.”
The consultant said the pace of housing construction has slowed in recent years, even though the pace of immigration has increased.
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