A Lady Lake commissioner has gone on record with her concern about the potential saturation of her community with apartments.
A massive apartment complex is under construction at the corner of Cherry Lake Road and County Road 466. And though it is located on the edge of Sumter County, it will be a stone’s throw from Lady Lake, which has agreed to provide water and sewer to the more than 300 units.
“Do we really want the town saturated with apartments? Enough is enough. We don’t want a whole town of apartments,” said Commissioner Ruth Kussard, a resident of the Village of La Reynalda.
She received some reassurance at Monday’s commission meeting, when it was revealed that 500 units planned at the intersection of U.S. Hwy. 27/441 and Lake Ella Road will be condominiums, not apartments, as previously understood. The main difference is that the condominiums would be owned and not rented. However, the condominiums are a promise from the developer. The location’s current zoning would allow apartments.
Studies have shown that 72 percent of the people who work in Sumter County are commuting from neighboring communities such as Lady Lady, Fruitland Park, Belleview and Ocala. Many people are calling out for affordable workforce housing to support the continued growth of The Villages.
According to the Urban Land Institute, workforce housing is defined as housing affordable to households earning between 60 and 120 percent of area median income, said Thad Carroll, Lady Lake’s Growth Management director.
“Workforce housing targets middle-income workers which includes professions such as police officers, firefighters, teachers, health care workers, retail clerks, and the like,” Carroll said.
Households who need workforce housing may not always qualify for housing subsidized by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program or the Housing Choice Vouchers program (formerly known as Section 8), which are two major programs in place for addressing affordable housing needs, he added.
Lady Lake has several large apartment complexes including OakLeaf Village Apartments with 356 units, The Quarters Apartments with 336 units and Rolling Acres Apartments with 139 units.
In 2016, Lady Lake approved a large development of single-family homes on pastureland across from Spring Arbor to be called Hammock Oaks. However, when a revised plan was brought back earlier this year before the Lady Lake Commission, commissioners’ eyebrows were raised when the single-family housing was partially replaced with “multi-family housing.”
Commissioner Kussard said she did a little homework and found about 100 apartment vacancies in Lady Lake.
