Live Local Act fix exempting farmland, protected areas from preemption moves to House floor

Legislation to narrow the types of land where developers can use state zoning preemptions to build affordable housing will next face a House floor vote after clearing its final Committee hurdle.

Members of the House Commerce Committee voted unanimously for the bill (HB 837), which would amend Florida’s Live Local Act, a sweeping law that has undergone significant changes since its original 2023 passage.

Coral Gables Republican Rep. Demi Busatta, HB 837’s sponsor, described her proposal as part of a yearslong effort to increase Florida’s inventory of “attainable affordable and workforce housing.”

She pointed to a change made to the law last year (SB 1730), which in part was meant to clarify a zoning preemption by defining “commercial, industrial and mixed-use.” That change, she said, inadvertently affected family and working farms by labeling them as “industrial use” or “commercial use.”

“This would amend those definitions,” she said of HB 837, “to protect our working farms and ensure that the zoning preemption doesn’t unintentionally capture farms and farm operations.”

That’s an accurate description. HB 837 would revise Live Local zoning definitions to explicitly exclude farms, farm operations and related uses from being classified as commercial, industrial or mixed-use land for the purposes of affordable housing zoning preemption.

Under the change, agricultural properties would no longer be treated as eligible sites for higher-density residential development under Live Local simply because they involve activities like product sales or processing.

HB 837 would also clarify that accessory, temporary and recreational uses do not qualify as commercial, industrial or mixed-use zoning categories.

Busatta amended the bill Wednesday to add several more Live Local exemptions, preventing it from applying in certain environmentally sensitive, agricultural and protected areas, including airport-impacted areas, working waterfront industrial zones, the Everglades Protection Area, the Wekiva Study Area, designated open-space and rural preservation districts, areas of critical state concern and the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

The Committee Chair, Sarasota Republican Rep. James Buchanan, thanked Busatta for her work on the bill.

“From time to time, when we pass large, wide-sweeping pieces of legislation like Live Local, it is important that we go back and reflect in our communities and make the appropriate changes, where perhaps that original intent is not being captured in application,” he said.

Busatta, in turn, thanked the Committee’s members for working with her to improve the measure, which received three “no” votes — all from Democrats — during the bill’s prior stop in the House last week.

HB 837’s upper-chamber companion (SB 962) by Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley also awaits a floor vote after clearing three panels to which it was referred without a single “no” vote.