Renovations in FTL might require elevation
A Fort Lauderdale beach homeowner with a leaky roof got a shocking response when he applied for permits: First, elevate your house.
As local governments face flooding realities, some homeowners dreaming of new kitchens and bathrooms are encountering what Mark Cullen did. When homes in flood-prone areas are substantially renovated, or built from scratch, they have to be constructed on higher ground so rising floodwaters don’t swamp them.
Coastal Florida regions have tens of thousands of people in flood zones, particularly those near the ocean, the Intracoastal Waterway, canals and low-lying areas.
More than 700,000 homeowners in South Florida live in floodprone areas and carry federally backed flood insurance, according to Danon Lucas, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
In Fort Lauderdale, cases like Cullen’s are increasingly coming to light, the result of new federal flood maps adopted in 2014 and the city’s regulations on elevations adopted to protect against sea level rise. The city is poised to loosen the rules a bit Tuesday, to aid frustrated home renovators trying to improve the city’s older housing stock.
Other communities haven’t addressed the issue yet. In Palm Beach County, the new FEMA maps brought more homeowners into high-risk zones and drew protest from local officials. New maps are still under review.
The maps can leave some homeowners a foot or more below the new elevation requirements.
The difference is most visible when a new home is built. New homes in special flood zones are built on visibly higher ground, if the new maps dictate it.
Truly Burton, executive vice president of the Builders Association of South Florida, said she wasn’t aware of any existing homes being elevated. But a newly built home in places like Miami Beach and the Florida Keys could be 6 or 8 feet higher than the house next door, she said.
Those in flood risk zones aren’t just along the coast. Richard Czuba, a pollster whose husband is a professor at Northwestern University, said their home is on the edge of the floodplain, four blocks west of Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale’s Middle River Terrace neighborhood. When they submitted plans to add a master bedroom, they were told they’d have to elevate it a foot and a half, a requirement he called “ridiculous.’’
Czuba had to scale back his home addition so he wouldn’t trigger the requirement for a change in elevation.
Cullen said he was allowed to repair his roof leak only after the city tagged it as an emergency.
“I don’t think it’s fair for any homeowner to have to go through this,’’ Cullen been a nightmare.’’
The elevation requirement comes into play when a homeowner in a flood risk zone, as determined by FEMA, does “substantial” renovations. “Substantial” means the work amounts to 50 percent or more of the home’s value at the time the work is done. So a $50,000 job would be 25 percent of a $200,000 home.
Neither Czuba nor Cullen would have had a problem if the rules were that simple. But they’re not.
Some cities include past renovations when determining whether the new project amounts to half of a home’s value. In Fort Lauderdale, 10 years of renovations are considered, and each job is calculated against the home’s value at the time the work was done. Because of the cases that have come to light, the city is considering reducing the cumulative period to two years. A final vote is scheduled by the City Commission on Tuesday.
Still, the requirement will remain in place for homeowners with major improvements in a two-year span, particularly if their home value is relatively low. Czuba said the federal rules are discriminatory, because a $100,000 kitchen renovation could trigger the rule for a lowvalue home, but not for a mansion.
“If they continue with these kinds of policies, they’re going to put a damper on these neighborhoods,’’ he said. said. “It’s