Florida condominium owners are begging for relief after a new building safety law passed in the aftermath of the deadly Surfside collapse burdened them with staggering fees—and one lawmaker is warning that it could trigger the “next wave of homeless people.”
The issue of condo safety has become a lightning rod in Florida since Senate Bill 4D was passed in 2022. Now, lawmakers, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and homeowners are struggling to find a middle ground between two seemingly conflicting goals: ensuring that older properties have sufficient funds to carry out critical repairs, and not bleeding homeowners dry by forcing them to fund those repairs.
Rep. Mike Caruso, a DeSantis ally, has been ringing the alarm about the potentially disastrous impact of the strict new condo safety measures, especially on older owners living on fixed incomes.
If not amended, the law could trigger the “next wave of homeless people,” he said.
This hot-button issue was once again highlighted last week, when a segment of state lawmakers who support the controversial law refused to put it on the agenda of a special legislative session in defiance of the governor.
Caruso said he was shocked by this move and predicted that retired condo owners will soon face foreclosures because they “could no longer afford the triple reserves or the quadrupled dues,” according to the Miami Herald.
“It’s sad, and we’re not going to address it here in the Florida House. I’m shocked by it,” he added, according to the publication.
The divisive law was adopted in response to the partial destruction of the Champlain Towers South condo in the upscale Miami suburb of Surfside, FL, in June 2021, which killed 98 people.
While the bill aimed to make older condo complexes safer to prevent another tragedy like the one that happened in Surfside, critics of the measure have expressed concerns that the tangle of new safety requirements and increased financial demands could bankrupt homeowners and condo associations alike.
What Floridians are saying about the law
Charles Burkett, the mayor of Surfside, suggested to Realtor.com® in an email that lawmakers jammed through the condo safety bill before federal investigators had a chance to find the official cause of the collapse—a process that is still ongoing nearly four years later.
“The tragedy is that many very, very expensive solutions have been put forward for a problem that may or may not exist,” Burkett said. “The result is our condo owners are suffering badly from it and in many cases, losing their homes.”
Since affixing his signature to the bill less than a year after the Surfside disaster, DeSantis has come out in support of amending the legislation.
“We’re now seeing some problems that I think were unintended that have popped up, and we have a responsibility to act to make sure that people can stay in their condo units,” he said earlier this month, according to Florida Politics. “The Legislature should not be doing anything that’s going to cause someone to have to flee because of an artificial mandate.”
In calling on the Legislature to take up the condo costs issue during the special session, DeSantis suggested that a single law could not be relied upon to fix all the problems that have been plaguing Florida’s condos for years.
