In my blog post of April 28, 2025, I explained that the biggest reason that housing is so expensive in Broward County is simple – we don’t have enough of it. Broward County needs about 7,000 new housing units per year just to keep up with population growth, and we’re building far less than that. The law of supply and demand states that if more people are competing for the same amount of a product, then the cost of the product will increase. We need more housing, but to get that, we need more land. And there isn’t any more land in Broward on which to build homes. Or is there?
It’s true that there’s little raw land left. Broward has sharks on the east, alligators on the west, and the north and south are fully developed. However, one possible solution is to redevelop and densify the existing land. That’s why, as a county commissioner, I authored the “Geller Amendment,” permitting residential use on commercial properties.
The Geller Amendment is the common name for amendments to Policy 2.16.4 of the Broward County Land Use Plan. I didn’t name it after myself; other people used the “Geller Amendment” as shorthand for the changes that I’d made, and now that’s what most people call the policy. Residential units authorized under this policy are generally called “Geller Units.”
When I drafted this policy, I wanted to create more housing units in Broward. I wanted to help create affordable housing, and I wanted to steer new housing toward transit corridors for “Transit Oriented Development” (TOD). I wanted to work with local governments instead of overriding them, and I wanted to protect local neighborhoods from high-rise developments in the middle of single-family areas. I believe that the Geller Amendment accomplishes all of those goals.
Briefly, what the Geller Amendment does is:
- Permits but doesn’t require local governments to pass an ordinance giving them the ability to authorize residential development on commercial property.
- Requires that when the local government authorizes residential development, it is in addition to, and not instead of, commercial development.
- Permits this development only on arterial roadways, within certain distances of rail stations or inside Activity Centers (RACs or LACs).
- Requires either a certain percentage of affordable housing or payments to a city or county affordable housing trust fund. The number of market-rate units given for each affordable unit depends on whether the affordable unit is workforce or medium income (80 to 120% of AMI), low or moderate income (50 to 80% of AMI), or low or very low income (under 50% of AMI). Different groups refer to these percentage ranges using different titles. The AMI for a Broward County household at the end of 2024 was $89,100. If instead of building affordable housing, developers wanted to pay into an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, that number started at $10,000 per unit and has been annually adjusted for inflation. If a developer wants to build 135 units, they might have to build 15 units at 50 to 80% of AMI or contribute $1,350,000 (adjusted for inflation) by calculating 10,000 per unit times 135 units.
- If local governments make approvals of the use of the Geller Amendment a conditional use or special exception, there are no county financial incentives to the city. If the local governments make approvals a permitted use, there are county financial incentives for the local government.
The Geller Amendment continues to be modified, and current working groups are drafting additional amendments to it.
The Geller Amendment is only one version of densification. In a future article (or articles), I’ll explain the state “Live Local” act.