Downstairs storage enclosures will be discussed at the Monroe County Board of Commissioners meeting tomorrow

Emily Schemper, Senior Director of Planning and Environmental Resources for Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.

The Board of County Commissioners will meet tomorrow at 10 a.m.

Schemper said, “This year, 2025, the Board of County Commissioners meetings are starting at 10 o’clock, rather than nine, to help with the travel time for staff. So yes, tomorrow, 10am many items on the agenda, but two I wanted to highlight. One is item P5 and this is a discussion and direction item the board will consider a staff drafted letter to FEMA requesting elimination of our entire, we call it the remedial plan. It is the document that requires us to limit those downstairs storage enclosures to less than 300 square feet. So that’s been talked about a lot. The board did give direction to work towards getting rid of that square footage limit and staff now has a letter drafted with all of the backup to get rid of that and what’s called the inspection on sale program that was put on hold for a while, and now we’re ready to officially request to FEMA that we work towards getting rid of that. So the board will discuss that tomorrow, just to confirm again that that’s the way they want to move forward. Then staff will try to set up a meeting with FEMA directly to go ask for that.”

What is the inspection on sale program?

Schemper said, “I’m not a huge expert on it, and I actually don’t know how many times it actually was happening, but it’s actually a requirement that when someone sells their property, they have the county come and do an inspection on it, and then that inspection result is actually a buyer beware item, so the buyer knows is my downstairs enclosure that I’m about to purchase, is it legal? Was it supposed to be different? Was it supposed to be smaller? Is it only for storage? That’s what it was set up for, so that the buyers would know what they were getting into. But it was very difficult to implement, and the county doesn’t know when people are selling and buying homes, so we’re not notified every time there’s a purchase. So over the years, I don’t think it was consistently applied, and the real estate industry had concerns with it as well. So there’s a different program that is already written into the code based on the updated code a couple years ago, and it is called a non conversion agreement. That’s an agreement an owner has to sign if they build or do certain work on one of those downstairs storage enclosures. They have to sign an agreement that says it will always remain storage, and it will show the floor plan of what was approved, and then that gets recorded in the chain of title for the property, so the buyers will be able to see what was recorded when they get their title work done, and that kind of takes the place of it, but it’s a different mechanism. We’re trying to protect buyers to some degree, because we over and over hear, well, I bought the property this way, and I didn’t know that it was not compliant, and now I’m in trouble with the county, or now I’m in trouble with FEMA, or I’m in trouble with my insurance company. So it’s partly to protect the buyers, and also residents and property and insurance rates and all of that is all tied into it. The square footage will still be limited to just for storage, not for living space, but hopefully the square footage limitation will be lifted.”

There’s possibly a moratorium on ROGOs being considered.

Schemper said, “This issue is complicated beyond belief, and I will do my best to be simple, but it’s hard. Simple and quick, we are sort of working on multiple tracks at the same time, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. The Board and the cities voted in December about a certain number of units or number of evacuation hours they would be comfortable with, and it was an increase over the 24 hour evacuation limit. Whether or not that will get approved by the legislature, we don’t know. So right now, what we’re working on is sort of it’s almost like a worst case scenario, if we don’t get any more units at all, what do we do? We have to start now, because it takes a while for us to change our codes, the board was very interested, and the state also was interested in this, and it makes our position more favorable with the state. They were interested in a new category of housing called market rate workforce. It does not have restrictions for affordable income and all of that, but it does have a restriction that the people have to live and work in Monroe County. So that’s like the residents of Monroe County. That’s a great housing category to have because that’s what we need. So we’re working on a plan to move as many of our existing remaining ROGOs that we have left to give out right now, without any changes from the state, what do we have left? And it’s not many. It’s 92. Trying to move a whole bunch of those into this new category. What the board’s considering tomorrow is, should we press pause on giving those out while we make the change and move them into the other category? Or should we keep giving them out as usual, which would mean we spend down about 62 of those and move the rest of them into the new category? So you’d end up with more workforce housing if you do a moratorium, but then you do make people wait for a year to get permits. So it’s a big decision. There’ll be a discussion. It’s R3, a public hearing tomorrow, and we will see where that goes, but we welcome public comment on that as well.”

We’re hearing that our state Representative is not necessarily in favor of the recommendation of the Board of County Commissioners, so it’s probably pretty smart to have a plan B.

Schemper said, “We’ve gotten information from the governor’s office directly about what they would like the county and the municipalities to do. They want us to spend the rest of what we have before we ask for more, and we have not gotten support from them at this point for more units. So we’re in kind of a tough spot. The board, and the cities voted in December about sort of their overall big picture desire for more units. But we’re trying to work with the governor’s office, Florida Commerce, obviously our Representative and Senator. There’s lots and lots of moving parts and opinions, so we’re trying to work together and make things happen and staff, of course, we’re playing out every scenario in our heads and trying to plan for each one.”

The municipalities also have their own pool of units to disperse.

Schemper said, “They have their own, but they are closer to being out of units, so I don’t know that they even have enough to play with in terms of moving them around. But yes, every jurisdiction has its own pool of units, and they’re all divided up differently.”

Can more ROGO units be requested in a few years?

Schemper said, “There’s an opportunity every year to make a legislative request. So this is more about strategy, timing and also the overall picture of what do we want for development in the Keys. But it’s not just about the big picture. It’s also about timing, strategy. How quickly or slowly should they be given out? And making sure that we’re watching infrastructure and concurrency for all of our public facilities along the way.”