Florida SB 954 — Certified Recovery Residences (2025)

What the statute does

SB 954 amends F.S. § 397.487 — the certified-recovery-residence statute — to require that local governments establish a formal, streamlined process for reasonable-accommodation requests under the federal Fair Housing Act. The statute does not preempt local zoning the way the Live Local Act does; it forces cities to publish procedure. A city that denies a recovery-residence application on zoning grounds without a documented procedural framework faces Fair-Housing-Act litigation exposure. The statute's leverage is procedural rather than substantive.

How the corpus reads it

Two cities in the dataset responded to SB 954 inside the same 28-day window in March 2026, on different procedural surfaces:

• Clermont — Ordinance 2026-013, March 3, 2026. Staff-initiated text amendment adding a new article under Chapter 125 of the Land Development Code. Approved 6-0. Commissioner Cramer named the policy frame on the record: the city has both legal and moral obligations under state and federal law, and the ordinance is engineered to comply while preserving life-safety, building, parking, and property-maintenance enforcement authority. Commissioner May raised the deepest substantive question — whether parking standards should vary by level of care (especially Level 4, which can include clinical services) — without slowing the vote.
• Leesburg — CUP-26-871 at 2007 Butler Street, March 19, 2026. Final decision by the Planning Commission, no City Commission step. Approved 6-0. Applicant Keisha Geist (15-year ALF administrator) reframed the use as memory-care-leaning under the certified-recovery-residence licensing umbrella. The Bowersox-Robertson-O'Kelley denial bloc — three of nine peripheral residential denials in 2024-2025 — voted YES.

Why the entity matters for the corpus

SB 954 is the first instance in the dataset of a state statute whose mechanism is procedural compulsion rather than substantive preemption. The defensive response is therefore inverted: cities adopt code proactively, not reactively. Clermont's 2026-013 ordinance is regulatory infrastructure built before litigation pressure arrives. Leesburg's first CRR CUP approval establishes the operational rule (small-footprint adaptive reuse + applicant credibility = unanimous approval). Watch for the third corridor city to surface the same surface in 2026.