Article
Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post
EDITORIAL
Published February 10, 2022
On June 24, 2021, the 12-story Champlain Towers South
building partially collapsed after a concrete slab below its pool deck
broke. Ninety-eight people died. Engineers examining the wreckage found the
building had developed major structural damage. Six months after the
tragedy, a Miami-Dade grand jury urged a number of reforms, including
revisions to the Florida Condominium Act and changes in state supervision of
condo associations to provide better condo governance and safety.
It took Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to get Florida to address lax building
codes and inadequate inspections. Thirty years later, a building disaster
that occurred in the same part of the state has lawmakers looking at new
standards to shore up aging coastal high-rises.
It shouldn't have taken the collapse of The Champlain Towers South building
in Surfside to prod lawmakers to update condominium regulations. Given that
more than half of Florida's 1.5 million condo units are at least 30 years
old, the need for better inspection and maintenance regulations was always
there, if not readily apparent.
“Unfortunately it takes a tragedy like Surfside to change the law and that’s
what’s going to happen here.” Eric Glazer, a Hallandale Beach lawyer
specializing in condo law told Jeffrey Schweers during a USA TODAY
NETWORK-Florida investigation of the 2021 condo tower collapse. “Now we are
going to have inspections all over the place.”
Florida Senate bill SB 1702 represents a first step to setting tougher
standards.
Sponsored by state Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Orange Park, the bill would
establish mandatory structural inspections for all apartment and condo
buildings taller than three stories and larger than 3,500 square feet.
Milestone inspections would be required once a building reaches 30 years old
and every 10 years thereafter. The standard is stricter for buildings within
three miles of a coastline; they'd require inspections at age 20 and every
seven years after that.
The bill sets a badly needed minimum on top of which state agencies like the
Florida Building Commission and local governments can pile even stronger
standards. New standards, like the changes to Florida's building codes after
Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida, are essential to prevent future
catastrophes like that of the Surfside tower, which didn't take a storm to
bring it down.
On June 24, 2021, the 12-story Champlain Towers South building partially
collapsed after a concrete slab below its pool deck broke. Ninety-eight
people died. Engineers examining the wreckage found the building had
developed major structural damage. Six months after the tragedy, a
Miami-Dade grand jury urged a number of reforms, including revisions to the
Florida Condominium Act and changes in state supervision of condo
associations to provide better condo governance and safety.Two million
people in Florida live in condominiums 30 years old or older. However, the
Florida Building Code doesn't include mandatory requirements for building
maintenance and inspections. That responsibility has been left to local
governments. Only Broward and Miami Dade counties and Boca Raton have
established recertification programs and inspections, of buildings 40 and
older.
In 2008, the Legislature passed a bill, signed into law by then-Gov. Charlie
Crist, that required condo boards with buildings over three stories tall to
have structural inspections every five years. The reform didn't last. Two
years after complaints about high inspection costs, state lawmakers approved
a repeal, which Crist signed into law.
SB 1702 is a step back in the right direction. The legislation requires
condo boards to make inspection reports available to all unit owners and to
potential buyers. It also allows local governments to impose timelines and
penalties related to inspections.
Unfortunately, the inspections and identifying needed repairs are as far as
the bill goes. Once the problem has been uncovered, there's nothing in state
law that requires condo associations to assess their members to pay for the
work to fix structural problems.
What lawmakers must somehow accomplish is that next step in helping tower
residents with the budget-busting assessments that come with repairing
structural damages of an aging condo tower. No easy feat as almost any new
fee or tax to subsidize condo owners will most likely face stiff opposition
in the current Florida Legislature.
Building safety inspections in Broward and Miami-Dade counties can cost as
much as $20,000 to $40,000, and repairs can run into the millions. Condo
owners delayed repairs at the Champlain Towers South building after
engineers found major structural damage that would require more than $15
million of work. Eventually, the association imposed major assessments, and
according to city records, the building had undergone $9 million in
incomplete repairs before the collapse.
For years, the state has gotten by with weak or non-existent regulations,
even as a continous high-rise building boom puts more and more residents at
risk. Passage of SB 1702 amounts to a small but necessary step to ensure
there are no more Surfsides.
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