Marta Lavandier/AP Photo
People walk on the beach in Surfside, Florida, June 29, 2021. The town, which has an official 12-story limit on its buildings, stands in contrast to neighboring Miami Beach, where buildings can be double and triple the height of Surfside’s tallest.
In the aftermath of one of the deadliest housing disasters of all time, government officials in Florida and around the country are scrambling to determine how the Surfside condominium collapse happened, and how similar catastrophes could be avoided in the future.
High-rise condos, which are almost always self-governed through homeowner associations, have emerged as a point of concern. Although not all condos are high-rises, the 13-story-tall Champlain Towers South condominium falls into the category of large-scale developments that were popular during the 1980s.
The generation of condos that erupted at that time is now collectively turning 40—an age when many high-rise buildings start to show serious signs of wear. The decade was notorious for lax building codes, with Ronald Reagan’s own Housing Department mired in scandal (at one point, the Justice Department was investigating over 600 cases related to Reagan’s HUD). And with the decade’s political winds dominated by deregulation, the self-governance of condos became popular. State building codes in an era of deregulation also were lacking.
According to Evan McKenzie, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago Law School and author of Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government, corruption in the housing industry at the time was “pathological.”
“It’s not a corrupt industry, but it has a lot of corruption in it,” he says of the ’80s housing industry. “If you left developers to do whatever they wanted, it’s just the Wild West.”
Condo experts—who seldom receive the public attention they have in the past few weeks—point out that state and local governments are the main overseers of housing building codes and regulation. That varies vastly depending on where you live.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data from 1990, Florida boasts the greatest number of condominiums. But other states are not far behind, including Texas and New Jersey. The Surfside tragedy has caused some states to evaluate their own policies and assess whether condos—which often create a collective action dilemma, as sometimes hundreds of residents must agree to front the cost of repairing huge amounts of aging concrete and rebar—should be put under greater scrutiny.
Despite at least 94 deaths, the Surfside collapse wasn’t enough to prompt Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to action.
Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy tried to reassure residents that the state’s building codes are “among the strongest in the nation.” New Jersey requires regular inspections of multifamily residential buildings with more than three units. “The Florida condominium collapse is a sobering reminder that inspections and enforcement of building codes are critical tools that keep people safe,” the governor said in a statement.
Despite at least 94 deaths as of Tuesday, the Surfside collapse wasn’t enough to prompt Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to action. The Miami Herald reported last week that the governor refused to commit to state reform on condo oversight when asked. Instead, he suggested that Champlain Towers South “had problems from the start.”
The inaction is depressing but not necessarily surprising. “The way public policy works in this country, you can’t assume that just because there is an obvious and very serious problem, government will get busy doing something to address it,” says McKenzie. “This is especially true in states run by Republicans, where the anti-government ideology is so strong that they often actively oppose doing anything other than turning over all responsibility to abstractions like ‘the private sector’ and ‘the market.’”
Although the Surfside collapse is agreed to have been caused by a combination of factors, there are measures state governments can take to ensure structural repairs are taken seriously and with a greater sense of urgency. Experts like McKenzie say that although condos are privately owned, they should be considered part and parcel of larger state infrastructure. As a public-safety concern, he says, they’re as important as bridges and roads, and recent events provide evidence for that.
DeSantis may have refused to officially commit to state-level reforms, but others in Florida have taken action. Last week, The Washington Post reported that the Florida Bar Association established a task force dedicated to reviewing the state’s building code. Although it wasn’t organized by the governor, the group hopes to complete the review within 90 days—in time for legislative committees to consider proposals before the session’s start in January.
“Although it’s not public—they are private buildings—concrete and rebar are a part of the infrastructure that keeps people safe,” Bill Sklar, the task force chair, told the Prospect. “Since this is already being debated in Washington in a major way, maybe this should be part of the debate.”
In Florida, Miami-Dade and Broward Counties require a safety inspection when buildings turn 40. Sklar says the task force will look into making this a standard across Florida. The 40-year inspection is representative of how haphazard local requirements often make up a patchwork system of housing regulation.
The Champlain Towers South catastrophe has spurred a greater debate about what counts as infrastructure, and when the government should step in to ensure public safety.
One major focus following the condo collapse was the building’s financial reserves. As has been well documented, an engineering consultant conducted a report on Champlain Towers South’s needed repairs in 2018. The consultant found significant spalling and cracking, estimating that the key area to address—the garage and pool deck—would cost nearly $4 million.
Condo associations often keep financial reserves for this exact purpose: to fund repair costs and renovations. But few states require reserve studies, which bring in experts to determine just how much a condo association should set aside. Residents typically want to keep their costs as low as possible, meaning that they often advocate for lower reserve fees. This is where the tragedy of the commons comes in: The ideal of communitarian living can be superseded by residents’ desire to keep their fees exceptionally low.
“This thing really comes down to the states, and less so cities,” says Matthew Lasner, an associate professor of urban studies and planning at Hunter College. “Cities obviously regulate, and their jurisdiction covers structural things, such as building heights. But states need to significantly tighten up their requirements for reserve studies and funding reserves.”
The struggle over reserve funds highlights the pitfalls of cooperative living arrangements without government support. Sklar, the chief of Florida’s condo law task force, says that the group will also look into public loan programs and long-term financing to support condo communities that cannot afford structural repairs.
More stringent and supportive condo legislation already exists elsewhere. California, for instance, requires a reserve study every three years, and mandates greater transparency in the reserve process.
The Champlain Towers South catastrophe has spurred a greater debate about what counts as infrastructure, and when the government should step in to ensure public safety. “I would make the argument that this is a part of a broader infrastructure problem,” Thomas Skiba, the CEO of the Community Associations Institute, an international membership organization of homeowner associations, told the Prospect. “I don’t think the proposed infrastructure bill addresses this at all, but it’d be great if it did.” Upgrading maintenance on buildings could certainly fall into the “resiliency” bucket of the bipartisan infrastructure framework.
As someone who has focused on condo policy for over two decades, McKenzie is one of the phenomenon’s largest critics. But when asked whether condos should be phased out entirely, he says no. Instead, he believes states need to pass air-tight reforms while increasing the system’s transparency. Condo buyers should know just how much money is in the building’s reserve should it require major repairs.
“This collective action problem is insurmountable,” he says. “We could talk from now until breakfast tomorrow about this. They’re not going to change unless they’re forced to.”
