Downstairs Enclosure Dilemma in the Florida Keys

Hi Everyone- This article was published in the Miami Herald last week regarding the fight to save the downstairs enclosures that are found throughout the Florida Keys. Please read on....

Florida Keys try to save downstairs rooms in stilt homes
Jul 27, 2009 — The Miami Herald



Cammy Clark

Jul. 27, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Debra and Rory Brown were applying in 2006 for an elevator permit to help their newly paralyzed son get around the Cudjoe Key stilt home they bought three years earlier when they made an upsetting discovery: Their downstairs enclosure is illegal.

And they're not alone in the low-lying Florida Keys. As many as 8,000 downstairs enclosures -- from single rooms to complete rental apartments -- have been built illegally under stilt homes since 1974.

That was the year Monroe County agreed to strict federal regulations that ban most residential below-flood-level construction to join the National Flood Insurance Program.

Some enclosures were constructed on the sly. But many had the county's blessing, with building permits and tax bills. All are jeopardizing the island chain's subsidized flood insurance.

To correct the 30-year mess that the county helped create, the County Commission this month unanimously agreed to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency a limited amnesty proposal they think can save most downstairs enclosures. FEMA runs the flood insurance program.

"We don't want this headache to keep being passed on," Monroe County Mayor George Neugent said. "Let's bite the bullet and provide a long-term solution."

AMNESTY PROPOSAL

The new proposal would award amnesty for all downstairs enclosures built before the inspections began on March 14, 2002. Nobody knows how many homeowners would qualify.

To get amnesty, homeowners would have to obtain an annual, special-use permit. It would include a fee for a debris cleanup fund, which would be tapped if flood waters destroyed the ground-level enclosure. Any future sale of a home in unincorporated Monroe County would be required to be inspected.

But the proposal does not help homeowners who rent their downstairs enclosures. FEMA regulations never have allowed such enclosures to serve as rentals, a common practice in the Keys.

Attorney Richard Bennett -- who represented a group of Keys' homeowners called "Keep Our Downstairs Enclosures" that failed to resolve the issue in the 1980s -- called the commission's new proposal "brilliant" and "our last, best hope."

FEMA is considering it. FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudek said officials at the Atlanta regional office discussed the draft proposal Tuesday in a conference call with headquarters in Washington.

The proposal, however, has opposition. Citizens Not Serfs, a group campaigning for less regulation, says that the county should determine whether the pilot inspection program has worked -- it's slated to run through 2011 -- before proposing anything new.

"Other coastal communities don't have mandatory downstairs enclosure inspections," said Citizens Not Serfs founder Phil Shannon. "Why does Monroe County have to have a unique, one-of-a-kind program?"

FEMA officials, who battled Monroe for decades over the issue, argue that building anything beneath a stilted home only brings problems when storms hit.

"After Hurricane Ike, at the south end of Galveston, the one house that was elevated and built in a strong way was the house that was left," said Hudek. "That's the picture we like to see."

Commissioner Mario de Gennaro said he wants to move fast on getting approval for the amnesty proposal to prevent any future demolitions and get people to use licensed contractors.

But such relief could come too late for some, such as Joe Stazzone. This month, the county ordered him to remove the two-bedroom, one-bath downstairs enclosure of his oceanfront home on Duck Key by Aug. 20. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he said.

LEGAL BATTLE

Stazzone bought the three-bedroom, two-bath house a decade ago as a vacation home. He said he has spent $15,000 in legal fees to try to keep the downstairs rooms that were built in the mid 1970s, long before he bought the house.

Those who rent their ground-level rooms are in a similar bind.

Bob Haupt, who bought his house 13 years ago with the rental unit and tenant in place, said he is being forced to kick out the now 30-year tenant and probably sell his dream home in Islamorada because of the loss of income. "We were deceived when we bought this place," Haupt said.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican whose district includes the Keys, sides with homeowners. "Amidst a national housing crisis, FEMA is taking unjust retroactive enforcement measures against Keys properties," she said.

But because mortgages are tied to having flood insurance, the county can't risk losing the program, said County Commissioner Kim Wiggington.

As of 2008, 20,026 flood insurance policies were in force in unincorporated Monroe County, providing $4 billion in coverage, according to the county.

Flood insurance covered little of the damage to the Browns' downstairs enclosure on Cudjoe Key after the storm surge from Hurricane Wilma in 2005, Rory Brown said.

"We'll take the risk," he said. "All we want is for our son to have a home that is accessible to him. He deserves his independence."


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