Legislative Reporter We see a Florida where our communities, economies, and environments all thrive.
Friday, March 13, 2026 Gone, but not forgotten. The Florida Legislature adjourned, Sine Die, this afternoon without the traditional Hankie Drop ceremony. Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Danny Perez announced a goal of coming back in mid-April for a Special Session to pass a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The exact dates have yet to be announced, though the 2026-27 fiscal year begins July 1. Governor DeSantis already called the legislature into a Special Session beginning on April 20 to address issues related to congressional district reapportionment. He also intimated that he would call an additional special session to address proposed property tax reforms. With a series of Special Sessions on the horizon, the legislature spent the final days of Regular Session focused on policy issues, with many bills bouncing back and forth for negotiation between the chambers. In total, 237 bills passed (including 44 local bills) out of the 1,896 bills filed this session. Below is a summary of the bills we tracked that passed during the legislative session. A chart at the end lists those that did not make it across the finish line this year.
Priority Passed Bills (Alphabetically) Affordable Housing – CS/CS/HB 1389 by Rep. Mike Redondo (R-Miami) makes a variety of changes regarding the Live Local Act, passed during the 2023 Regular Session. The bill provides that the preemptions of the Live Local Act permitting the development of affordable housing apply on any property owned by a county, municipality, or school district, and on parcels greater than 3 acres owned by a religious institution which has contained a house of public worship for at least 10 years. The bill provides that a local government may not utilize other dimensional means such as setbacks to constructively restrict the height of an authorized project, provides that farming and farm operations are excluded from the definitions of commercial, industrial, or mixed-use zoning, exempts from Live Local areas subject to land regulations in existence before July 1, 2026, intended to retain the open character of land, areas of Critical State Concern, and any portion of a property encumbered by a recorded conservation easement, permits the utilization of the Live Local Act in the vicinity of airports when approved by the airport’s governing body, clarifies language around the prohibition against discriminating against affordable housing development in land use decisions by a local government, waives sovereign immunity in cases based on such discrimination, allows local governments to provide density bonus incentives to landowners who donate real estate for the purpose of assisting local governments in providing affordable housing to military families that receive the basic allowance for housing, and calls for an OPAGGA study on the efficacy of using mezzanine finance and use of tiny homes to meet affordable housing needs. The bill also includes provisions related to the affordable housing property tax exemption. The bill defines multifamily project to include a development which is held under common ownership or control and approved and developed in compliance with the same site plan approval or development order, while excluding individual detached single-family residences or multiple parcels separated by more than 200 feet, requires the taxing authority to find that the local availability of affordable units has exceeded the demand for each of the previous three years, rather than the most recent year, for local governments to opt out of the tax exemption, and provides that, notwithstanding an ordinance or resolution opting out of the tax exemption, the owner of a property that was issued a building permit on or after July 1, 2026, for the development within four years before the effective date of such ordinance or resolution, may apply for and continue to be granted the exemption provided the requirements are otherwise met. These amendments first apply to the 2027 tax roll. The proposed effective date is July 1, 2026. (House Staff Analysis) Note the bill no longer contains the ADU language.