Sarasota County’s attempt to stop thousands of apartments from being built in rural communities is now facing the legal challenge the county attorney warned was likely all along.
Two developers and a church have sued the county after commissioners voted in April to block six of the seven projects proposed under Florida’s controversial Live Local Act, setting up a court battle that could determine whether local governments have the power to keep the state’s affordable-housing law from reshaping agricultural and open-use land.
The lawsuits come amid a rush of new Live Local applications before a July 1 deadline, after which new state restrictions will make it more difficult to build apartment complexes on rural land. The new applications — including one by D.R. Horton to build near Celery Fields — would add more than 2,300 apartments and push the number of units caught in the dispute past 5,000 rentals…