Article
Courtesy of The Washington Post
By
Brendan Farrington
Published May 31, 2022
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TALLAHASSEE — Florida will require statewide
recertification of condominiums over three stories tall under new
legislation Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Thursday as a
response to the Surfside building collapse that killed 98 people.
But while the measure was hailed by lawmakers, the
senator who represents Surfside, Democrat Jason Pizzo, warns
there’s a lot more to do — and the state doesn’t have enough
structural engineers to handle the workload required to make
sure all the state’s high-rise condominiums are safe.
“Tell your nieces and daughters and sons to go study
engineering,” Pizzo said.
The governor’s signature came the day after the House
unanimously passed the bill during a special session
originally called to address skyrocketing property insurance
rates. The condominium safety bill was added to the agenda
Tuesday and immediately passed by the Senate.
Recertification will be required after 30 years, or 25 years
if the building is within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of the
coast, and every 10 years thereafter. The Champlain Towers
South was 40 years old and was going through the
40-year-recertification process required by Miami-Dade
County when it collapsed last June.
At the time, Miami-Dade and Broward counties were the
only two of the state’s 67 that had condominium
recertification programs.
There are more than 1.5 million condominium units in Florida
operated by nearly 28,000 associations, according to a
legislative analysis conducted earlier this year, Of those,
more than 912,000 are older than 30 years and are the home
to more than 2 million residents. |
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State
Sens., from left, Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, Jason Pizzo,
D-North Miami Beach and Lauren Book, D-Plantation confer during
debate on Senate Bill CS/SB 2-D: Property Insurance in the Florida
Senate Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at the Capitol in Tallahassee.
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Pizzo said there are about 650 certified structural engineers in Florida.
And there’s a high demand for them on new construction alone. Most of the
provisions of the law will take effect in 2024, so there is some time to
prepare, Pizzo said.
“We’re going to be back in regular session at least one more time before any
of this really kicks in, which gives ample time to tweak, amend, hear from
the public and people on the ground,” said Pizzo, who is hosting a public
forum on the new law with other legislators next month.
He said that the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation
doesn’t have enough staff to handle condo regulation.
“They’re operating on bare bones,” he said. “When it comes to life safety
issues, I’m just not comfortable that the same agency that licenses
manicurists are also licensing engineers for buildings ... They need to be
well resourced.”
The bill would require that condominium associations have sufficient
reserves to pay for major repairs and conduct a study of the reserves every
decade. It would also require condominium associations to provide inspection
reports to owners, and if structural repairs are needed, work must begin
within a year of the report.
Similar legislation failed during the regular session that ended in March.
Meanwhile, a final settlement agreement is expected Friday that will pay at
least $96 million to homeowners with condos in the Surfside building but
whose families suffered no loss of life.
The condominium legislation was attached to a bill that would forbid
insurers from automatically denying coverage because of a roof’s age if the
roof is less than 15 years old. Homeowners with roofs 15 years or older
would be allowed to get an inspection before insurers deny them coverage.
While some Democratic lawmakers complained that the special session on
insurance didn’t go far enough to help relieve homeowners, they did praise
the addition of the condominium safety legislation.
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