What does the man tasked with easing Miami-Dade’s housing crunch think can help?

Since beginning his tenure as Miami-Dade County’s public housing and community development director in April, South Miami native Alex Ballina has assessed ways in which he can help the county address its protracted housing-affordability crisis that started prior to the pandemic in 2020 and has gotten much worse.

The Christopher Columbus High School graduate took over for Michael Liu who held the job since 2014. Ballina has a personal motivation to help build more affordable homes in the county that raised him. He had overseen public housing maintenance, operations and leasing for the county before leaving 11 years ago to work in the private sector developing apartments.

The latest Miami-Dade housing figures offer one clear indication of the daunting challenge Ballina and the county face: although home sales in April again plunged by double digits, the median price of a single-family home reach a record $600,000. And the Miami metropolitan area is one of the most competitive urban areas in the country to rent an apartment.

Ballina, 48, recently spoke to the Miami Herald about high housing costs in Miami-Dade, how public transportation can enhance residents’ housing options and quality of life, and more. The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

▪ Question: In what ways do you think your background in private-sector residential development is going to contribute to your work as county housing director?

▪ Answer: I know the needs of this community. I always like to say I’m born and raised here and think it makes a big difference. I have a real desire to see our community do well and make sure that the quality of life is built not only for our generation, but for the generations upcoming.

What I learned in the private sector of development is how to come up with innovative ways of building housing. We have the Everglades to the west. We’re tied in the middle. There’s only certain areas where we could build within our whole comprehensive master plan. We need to ensure that where we can get the housing density we can ensure that we provide that cost effectively to our residents, particularly teachers, firefighters and those providing public services.

We have a major supply and demand imbalance in the multifamily area, meaning availability of apartments and townhouses. The only way you’re going to be able to make it better is to build more. It takes cycles of three years, five years, maybe seven years, especially when you’re dealing with the affordable housing component of it, because you’ve got to wait for the cycles to come through for the tax credits and for the different funding sources that we have. It’s become very difficult because there is so much demand right now for that type of financing and there’s not enough money to go around. So building more is one piece. The second is preserving the housing funding sources we have.

One of the biggest critiques that real estate developers have had here is that there are no incentives for them to develop affordable housing. In what ways could the county better support affordable housing development?

This is so far what we’ve done to encourage that development. If you build affordable housing, which is for people with incomes at 80% or below of the area’s median income, there’s density incentives so you could build more. There’s also financial incentives, meaning that you get favorable financing or favorable access to capital. You also have traditionally had property tax abatement when you’re building multifamily projects. If you build for people earning under 120% of the area’s median income, you get impact fee reduction, expedited permitting with the building department and you also get property tax incentive grants.

The biggest problem that we have in terms of the production of affordable housing is the cost of construction because of the stiff South Florida building code that demands higher construction standards. Our development costs are typically 50% to 60% higher than anywhere else in the country. A developer’s operating expenses are also a lot more because we’re right in the cone of hurricanes during the six-month Atlantic hurricane season.

▪ Q: How do you hope to enhance the county’s housing efforts, which have included offering tens of millions of dollars in financial assistance for struggling renters and homeowners?

▪ A: We’re bringing more landlords into our Section 8 program, which in turn allows us to rent more units to people that have the voucher program. We’re really expediting in terms of permitting for new residential construction. We have close to 12,000 units in planning or under development right now that fill the category of affordable, workforce and market-rate housing, which is critical. One of the things that is very important is that we’re working with other departments on strategic urban planning. Transit-oriented housing communities, for example, are critical and important because they help affordability.

It’s another $1,000 a month that you’re spending on transportation by just having to have a car in Miami-Dade County. If you could live near the transportation hubs, that provides relief in terms of quality of life and affordability because a family of three may not have to have two vehicles. You have other mechanisms that you can use to get around with Uber, local trolleys, and Freebee, the free car rides available for short distances in select municipalities and on certain college campuses.

We’re still going to have to figure out the public transit connectivity in the western part of the county and connecting all those different areas, but I think we’re headed in the right direction.

▪ Q: What are your plans to maximize the way county land is used for housing development?

▪ A: We are tracking it. We did an outline of it and we’re working very closely with our zoning department to make sure that we are looking at these areas so that we can get the best use out of the land. You have a lot of pockets that are out there. You really want to take advantage of land where you can make sure that you’re able to get the proper development density, so that you could create more housing opportunities for everybody.

▪ Q: How long do you think it will take to improve housing affordability in Miami-Dade?

▪ A: You have to be intentional with your planning and the only way that you are able to get there is by taking action and ensuring that there’s ample housing supply, ample incentives to build, that the policy is in place, and that you have supportive functions within government to get us there.

You’re having different businesses come to Miami with different schematics. You have institutional dollars coming in here. Ninety percent of the big developments you see here is done with institutional money. That’s good for the real estate market. But the real estate investors have to make returns on their money. So you’re getting the influx of the capital coming in, but the rents are going up. The cost of living is going up because everybody’s chasing the few pieces of land that are here to build apartments and condos.

All we could do is make sure that we help increase housing density, add and improve public transportation and put the county’s housing funding for developers and residents where it needs to be. We are making sure that we support with more affordable housing our hospitality industry, our health care industry and our first responders, which make up 50% of our workforce here in Miami-Dade County.