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An empty home in Tesoro, a private golf club and residential community in Port St. Lucie. Voters will have a say in future growth in every county and municipality in a referendum in November.
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — Lesley Blackner drove through a maze of condominium towers, rarely seeing any curtains in the windows, or residents, and tried to contain her anger.
“They’ve crammed as much as they can in here,” she said this month, noting that just a few years ago cows grazed on the land west of I-95. “The people around here didn’t want it — they objected. But the City Commission did it anyway.”
Even now, with about 300,000 residential units sitting empty around the state, the push to build continues. Since 2007, local governments have approved zoning and other land use changes that would add 550,000 residential units and 1.4 billion square feet of commercial space, state figures show.
So for Ms. Blackner, a Palm Beach lawyer with a Mercedes full of paperwork, the real estate crisis is not just the fault of Wall Street, Washington or misguided borrowers; it is also the back-scratching bond between elected officials and builders — a common source of frustration in weak real estate markets around the country wherever developers are still fighting to add more housing.
In Florida, at least, Ms. Blackner hopes to put an end to the chronic oversupply with a ballot initiative she has labeled “Hometown Democracy.”
Amendment 4, as it is officially called, would give Floridians a vote on changes to state-mandated plans for growth in every county and municipality. Much of the potential impact of the measure is up for debate, with important details most likely to be decided by the courts.
But if it is added to the state’s Constitution — which would require 60 percent approval on Election Day — critics and supporters envision revolutionary change.
Leaders of the Yes on 4 campaign, including Ms. Blackner, say it would end a culture of freewheeling development that began when Hamilton Disston started dredging Florida swamps in the 1880s. Critics, led by chambers of commerce, say the measure would lead to lost jobs, chaos and expensive court battles.
Either way, the referendum is bringing into sharp relief the conflict surrounding real estate nationwide: while new homes, growth and the American dream are forever intertwined, many people are questioning why development often overwhelms other public priorities, even after it led to an economic crisis.
“Most planning advocates would love to have the structure we have in Florida, but most Floridians know that the structure doesn’t work,” said Michael Allan Wolf, a University of Florida law professor. “Amendment 4 suggests that, on the ground, this system is really broken.”
This is not an even fight. Ms. Blackner’s group has raised $2.4 million (with $800,000 from her own pocket), but most of it was spent on getting on the ballot.
The No on 4 campaign has raised nearly $12 million through a series of political action committees — enough for a glossy Web site, consultants and plenty of airtime. The Florida Association of Realtors is its largest single contributor, giving more than $2.3 million.
The nation’s biggest homebuilders, after receiving a multibillion-dollar bailout from Congress this year, have also been quite generous. Altogether, Lennar Homes, KB Home and Pulte Homes gave more than $1 million to No on 4’s main political action committee, Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy.
Ryan Houck, a spokesman for the group, said that developers were not the only opponents of the amendment, which he described as “overreaching and extreme.” The contributors’ list also includes community farm bureaus, which worry that it would make it harder to sell and rezone agricultural land for other uses.
At the Promenade, two 14-story luxury buildings in Boynton Beach, the 318 condominium units and 20,000 square feet of street-level retail and restaurant space are sitting virtually empty.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/politics/28florida.html?ref=todayspaper