Neighbours on Southwest Third Terrace in Cape Coral say their street already floods after heavy rain, and they are asking what a proposed affordable housing development with a lake and two four storey buildings will do to it once the city finishes reviewing the plans

Residents of Southwest Third Terrace in Cape Coral say a proposed affordable housing development could make flooding they already deal with worse, and the city has confirmed the plan is under review, Gulf Coast News reported.

Louis Torchia, who has lived in Cape Coral for more than 30 years and has owned his property since 1997, told the outlet he is worried about what the project would do to the water on his lot. He said he is afraid of what happens when the lake is dug and two four storey apartment buildings are set on the ground, and that the ground could be subject to collapse. That is his stated fear rather than an engineering finding, and no such finding has been reported.

Torchia showed the outlet photographs of flooding on his property taken after rainstorms.

Alan Bussaeus, who lives on the same street, described the same problem. He said the flooding gets pretty bad and that one year the whole street was under water.

Where the plan actually stands

The city of Cape Coral told Gulf Coast News the property is privately owned and that a developer submitted plans for the project on 19 June. Officials said the plan is currently under review.

The city also told the outlet that it does not handle problems arising from construction, and that those are the responsibility of property owners, developers and insurers.

LSI Companies, the brokers of the land, said that obtaining the proper permitting is necessary to ensure the development does not cause additional harm to neighbouring communities.

The state permit came first

The South Florida Water Management District told the outlet that an environmental resource permit was issued for the property in 2025. The environmental resource permit is the state level approval covering how a site handles its stormwater.

Neither the district's permit record nor the city's file on the 19 June submittal was obtained for this item. The report carries no application, permit or parcel number to search on, the district's ePermitting service did not respond to two attempts from this desk, and the city's planning path returned an error, so both the review status and the 2025 permit are reported here as what those agencies told Gulf Coast News.

The report does not name the developer, state how many units are proposed, or give the height, acreage or stormwater design of the project.

Torchia said he finds it unnecessary to contribute to what he almost sees as an environmental disaster, and that it is one of the reasons he and his household are moving.