The Towers and the Ticking Clock (Florida condos)

[Demovictory9]

Last edited Mon Jan 31, 2022, 06:38 AM - Edit history (2)

Long article.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/28/magazine/miami-condo-collapse.html



But meaningful reform, of the kind McGuinness imagined, has long been notoriously hard to enact. Florida has roughly 1.5 million residential condo units — among the most of any state — and a highly lucrative condo and co-op industry with many powerful players, from management companies and developers to firms specializing in condo law. Historically, these groups, and the lobbyists who represent them, have successfully pushed back against any policy they view as constrictive or unduly expensive. And already, just months after the collapse of Champlain Towers South, there are signs that similar efforts are underway. “You’d hope that this is the wake-up call,” Steven Geller, a longtime state senator and representative, told me of Champlain Towers. “But I’d anticipate the same thing we’ve seen since the 1980s. The same thing, incidentally, that you see with mass shootings, or at least mass shootings back when they were rare. The lobbying groups go out and go: ‘Listen, now is really not the time to deal with this. Now is the time to pray and heal. Let’s talk about it next year.’ Then next year comes around, and guess what? It’s old news. Let me tell you: I want to be wrong, but my experience says, ‘Be realistic.’”

Pull up a map of the Florida coast, drop your finger onto the surface and you’ll almost certainly land on a town or city with its own disaster in the making. According to one recent study, 918,000 of Florida’s condo units are, like the ones in Champlain Towers South, more than 30 years old; many towers were thrown up during the boom years, when oversight was lax, developers were incentivized to prize speed over attention to detail and every permit was a rubber stamp away.

Even in the most rigorously built structures, secured to the face of the earth by heavy pylons driven through yards of shifting sand, the coastal environment has inevitably taken its toll. Facades are pitted by the salt and sea air. Balconies are crumbling. Pool decks are spidered with cracks. And water — and rising sea levels — are a fact of life. Water on the roads, water slopping up and out of the drains, water in subterranean garages and the very foundations of condo towers packed with hundreds of residents who are frequently blind to the dangers that lie underfoot or, more tragic still, unable to fund the repairs that could save their lives.

And time is running out. “It is a ticking-clock scenario,” Eric Glazer, a veteran condo-law specialist told me. “A bomb got set off, back in the day, and it’s about to go off.”

[GoneOffShore]

1. A disaster waiting to happen.

And yet another reason that I'm glad we stayed away from Florida.

[malaise]

4. No- a disaster about to repeat itself n/t

[GoneOffShore]

12. Well, yes.

[NJCher]

2. Imagine

The equity hit these owners will eventually be taking. That is if they make it out alive.

[Demovictory9]

3. yes. for comparison: Millennium Tower (SF) owners have taken about a 50% loss in equity

based on recent sales.. people are still buying there but at 2012 prices

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. That's the leaning tower, yes?

And that's earthquake country to boot.

[Demovictory9]

7. yes

[modrepub]

6. Not To Worry

Federal money will somehow be secured to pay for these repairs. Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.

[Aussie105]

10. Repairs?

Like, lifting up a whole building and driving more pylons down to bedrock?

Totally impractical!

Haven't heard of any 'repair' procedures that would work, or be affordable.

[modrepub]

13. Government Buyout

Nothing like the public paying out exorbitant amounts of money to rich owners.

That's what was done in Centralia, PA, though the actual home owners didn't make all that much money.

[Auggie]

8. John D. MacDonald was way ahead of everybody (SPOILERS)

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Throw in a Cat 5 and the fun really begins

[Aussie105]

9. Looking at that picture . . .

and I'm thinking - packing that much weight in the form of high rise buildings, on such a narrow piece of coastal land?

Who allowed that in the first place?

[edhopper]

15. Corruption

The Condo lobby is very powerful

[EYESORE 9001]

11. I wouldn't live in a condo there, even if built to the latest & greatest standards

I don’t believe any engineers have a true understanding of the forces at play, taking into account climate change and all that entails, plus depletion of aquifers that promotes salt water infiltration.

[csziggy]

14. The picture in the OP shows condos built on an offshore island

Which are simply sand buffers with no solid structure underneath. Naturally, those island migrate with the water and wind forces. Now that condos have been built on them, they are held in place to a certain extent but over time, they will still tend to wash away.

The condo that collapsed might have lasted longer had the condo association done proper maintenance and repairs, but the land will eventually erode from underneath those buildings.

I've lived in Florida all my life and would never buy waterfront property, whether coastal or inland. I grew up in the middle of the peninsula and now live less than ten miles from the Georgia border in North Florida. That is as close to the coast as I want to be!