Affordable housing developer Lewis Swezy plans an 80-unit age-restricted apartment project near the Earlington Heights Metrorail stop in Miami-Dade County.
Swezy, through his Miami Lakes-based Centennial Management, wants to develop the six-story building with 60 one-bedroom apartments and 20 two-bedroom apartments on a 0.7-acre site at 4052 Northwest 22nd Avenue in an unincorporated area of the county, according to an application submitted to Miami-Dade this week. It will include rooftop amenities, 800 square feet of commercial space and 42 parking spaces.
The project, called Earlington Court Affordable Housing, will be for tenants 55 and older who earn from 30 percent to 80 percent of the area median income, Swezy said. A majority of the apartments will be for those earning 60 percent of AMI.
Miami-Dade’s annual AMI is $79,400, the Florida Housing Finance Corporation shows. To qualify for a unit designated for tenants at the 60 percent AMI bracket, a one-person household can’t earn more than $47,700, and a two-person household can’t earn more than $54,480.
Centennial paid $875,000 for the five-lot vacant development site in 2019, records show.
The firm is asking the county for an administrative site plan review. It originally filed a request for a pre-application meeting in December.
Swezy focuses on affordable housing, mainly using the state tax credit program that awards developers tax credits that they sell to investors and use the proceeds to finance projects. Centennial’s portfolio spans more than 3,500 affordable units.
In recent proposals, Swezy filed an application to Miami-Dade last summer for an eight-story, 132-unit age-restricted building at 13841 Southwest 252nd Street in the Princeton neighborhood.
Tax credits and other state and municipal government financing mechanisms make affordable housing more resilient to elevated interest rates. While higher rates and other economic headwinds have paused some planned multifamily projects, affordable rental development has continued. Also, demand is nearly ensured as many South Floridians are priced out of market-rate apartments due to record rent hikes in 2021 and 2022.
Affordable housing also has proved a boon for developers. Last month, Swezy paid $14.8 million for a six-bedroom Fisher Island home at 6923 Valencia Drive. He bought it from the widow of the late Russian real estate tycoon Dmitry Zelenov.
Developer Michael Swerdlow wants to redevelop five Miami-Dade public housing complexes with 5,730 affordable and workforce apartments. On Tuesday, a county committee approved the project that would replace existing public housing complexes Victory Homes at 520 Northwest 75th Street, Newberg at 7200 Northeast Miami Court, Gwen Cherry 22 at 7101 Northeast Miami Court, Gwen Cherry 06 at the intersection of Northwest 71st Street and Northwest First Court, and New Haven Gardens at 7200 Northeast Second Avenue in Miami.
The Pérez family’s Related Group plans an eight-story, 98-unit building at 5350 West Flagler Street in Miami’s Flagami. All units will be for households earning up to 30 percent of AMI.
Affordable housing developers also have seized on the Live Local Act, a state law that allows bigger projects than permitted by a site’s zoning and also grants property tax breaks to developers.
Russell Galbut’s GFO Investments family office proposes a 410-unit Live Local Act project with a 19-story and a 16-story building at 7350 Coral Way in Miami-Dade’s Corral Terrace neighborhood. Dr. Jorge Perez, who specializes in neonatology and neonatal medicine, is a partner on the development and will lease a seven-story medical office building part of the project.
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