By Sheila Payne
Members of the Alachua County Labor Coalition Housing Committee have been outreaching to city staff and Commissioners to find out when the Safe and Healthy Housing draft ordinance would be finally made available to City Commissioners and the public for mark-up and movement towards a final vote and implementation.
The latest email from the office of the city attorney stated that “…we don’t expect it to go before the City Commission any sooner than February 20, 2020.” ACLC has been working on a Renters’ Rights ordinance since early 2018 after months of meetings with renters about their greatest concerns. Our lawyer with Florida Legal Services, Reina Sacco, shared with us her well-researched white paper with examples of rental ordinances from all over Florida and the U.S. The ACLC shared these documents plus our own position papers with City Commissioners and staff in 2018.
The City Commission Renters Rights subcommittee has been meeting since at least Jan. 2019. The minutes from that meeting show that the program was already laid out with the elements that ACLC had presented and that you can find on ACLC website. Though there were subcommittee meetings roughly every two weeks for five months, a draft ordinance is still not out. We also know that the first year after the ordinance is voted on by the City Commission will be spent on educating renters and landlords and securing the infrastructure such as more housing inspectors to inspect rental properties. Please let the new City Manager and City Commissioners know that you are still waiting for an ordinance to be enacted so that we can stop the decline of housing stock, weatherize rental housing to lower utility bills, and educate renters on their rights to safe and healthy housing.
Jason and I met with the new Code Enforcement Head Pete Backhaus in mid-January 2020. He told us that the draft ordinance had just been circulated amongst involved staff and that he would follow the lead of the City Commission. We were previously involved in meeting with Code Enforcement as they came up with a draft budget for hiring more inspectors, a timeline for a four-year inspection schedule and what would be on the Renters Rights and Responsibilities handouts, among other items. Hopefully, that due diligence is not scrapped. We are now scheduling an appointment with the new City Manager, who seems to be very hands-on (he answered questions directly from City Commissioners this week about progress or lack of with the Living Wage ordinance and contract workers rather than sending an assistant manager).
As you all know, the greatest accomplishment that has come out of our Housing efforts besides lots of meetings with affected renters and public awareness of the shabby conditions of much of the rental housing stock in Gainesville is Alachua County Commissioners adding an anti-discrimination clause to their Housing Codes to include no discrimination based on source of income or citizenship status in April 2019. All cities in Alachua County are included. This means Housing Choice vouchers have to be accepted as income when renting a house anywhere in Alachua County. ACLC is now collecting complaints from renters who have been denied use of their vouchers when seeking housing. We are outreaching to landlords to educate them about the new law. We have also made some beautiful posters detailing renters’ rights and are distributing them. We seek more help on this campaign so we can go door to door visiting with the most affected renters to alert them of the new anti-discrimination law and the upcoming City of Gainesville housing ordinance provisions.
Jeremiah and I went to the County Commission Housing Authority Fair Housing update meeting just before newsletter deadline. There have been 30 complaints so far to the county about landlords not accepting Housing Choice Vouchers. Many of those include large apartment buildings. Also, some landlords will not answer questions on the phone about whether they will accept housing vouchers; they expect the potential renter to fill out an application before they will answer any questions. That would mean that a renter would have to pay an application fee to find out that their voucher will not be accepted as income towards renting. This is expensive and is a method of discouraging applications and obviously a way to circumvent detection of non-compliance with the ordinance.
Community advocates convinced the County to include in its sweeping anti-discrimination ordinance strong protections for those who are victims of domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, and human trafficking. The removal of tenants or denial of housing based on this gendered violence is now prohibited in Alachua County
Upcoming goals based on renters input:
- continue meetings with folks who would like to form tenant unions
- promote more publicly-owned housing
- removal of rental application fees
- rent controls and stabilization
- greater protections for rent withholding
- longer eviction time frames
- reduction of deposits
- And more assistance from the big 10 companies in Alachua County to provide assistance in upgrading current housing and building affordable housing.
We need more workforce housing. There are many colleges and universities around the U.S. who build workforce housing and also design and build affordable housing through their construction programs in the communities where they are supposed to be part of the fabric of the community. No more studies, “Friendship Seven,” more action! To get involved email, housing@laborcoalition.org.