Florida Live Local Act (CS/SB 102, 2023)

What the statute does

The Live Local Act preempts local zoning controls on affordable-housing projects that meet the statute's income and tenure thresholds in commercial, industrial, and mixed-use districts. Public notice and public hearings on qualifying projects are eliminated. Density and height controls are overridden up to the highest permitted within one mile, with statutory floors. A qualifying project arrives at the city as an administrative review, not a legislative decision.

How the corpus reads it

Pointe Grande (Sullivan Road, Minneola) became the corpus's reference exhibit. At the January 9, 2024 P&Z meeting, the City Attorney told the commission the city could not refuse the project. Five residents spoke against; the city had no procedural surface to weigh that opposition. The original 300-unit apartment proposal subsequently moderated to 178 townhomes — a 77% density reduction achieved entirely through sustained civic engagement, not through legal authority the city possessed.

On-the-record defensive responses

• Minneola Ordinance 2024-10 (March 12, 2024) — restricts future Live Local eligibility to I-1 (Industrial) and B-1 (Business) districts only, excludes PUDs, caps density at 8 du/acre, caps height at 35 feet. The most aggressive defensive posture in the corridor. Direct response to Pointe Grande, the project the city could not refuse.
• Clermont Comprehensive Plan amendment (February 2024) — reduced maximum density caps in the Comp Plan, shrinking the ceiling Live Local projects could reference. The old downtown maximum was 40 du/acre. Result: no developer has attempted a Live Local project in Clermont.
• Leesburg — no defensive code as of May 2026. The northern resistance city in the corridor remains exposed on the Live Local surface.

Why the entity matters for the corpus

The Live Local Act is the first axis of state-local tension in the dataset, predating SB 180 by two years. Every defensive code authored after it — Minneola's 2024-10, Clermont's density-cap reduction, Groveland's Village-zoning structure — reads against this statute as the threat surface. The Pointe Grande arc (300 → 178 units) is the corpus's clearest demonstration that civic engagement still moves projects even when legal authority has been preempted. The statute is the regulatory fracture line the rest of the corridor's defensive architecture is built across.