Bill takes small steps to curb future tragedies like the Surfside condo collapse | Editorial

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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