On Monday, September 18th ACLC members and supporters held a special Community Meeting to draw up a proposal for replacing the Gainesville and Alachua County Renters’ Rights ordinances, specifically the Residential Rental Unit Permit program ordinances. This was made necessary after Governor DeSantis signed HB 1417 in to law, which preempted (essentially nullified) the existing ordinances as they are currently written. Importantly, HB 1417 does NOT preempt the City and County ordinances prohibiting discriminating against would-be renters due to their lawful source of income (e.g., Section 8 vouchers). In light of the new law, the ACLC generously received pro bono legal services from local attorney Scott Bird, who was able to identify several legal options for saving most of the protections contained in the ordinances.
After hearing a presentation from Mr. Bird on his findings, meeting attendees discussed the options and voted unanimously to adopt a proposal to replace the current Residential Rental Unit Permit programs with a new program that saves nearly all renter protections. Under the new proposal, the living conditions and money-saving energy & water efficiency standards that were previously in the City and County business codes are moved into the building codes, and the requirement that landlords provide renters with literature on their rights under Florida and local law is shifted to the City and County by having them mail the literature to renters.
The only meaningful differences between the old programs and our new proposal concern inspections and the type of rental properties the regulations apply to. Under our new proposal, inspections to ensure basic living conditions and money-saving energy & water efficiency standards cannot be mandatory while a rental unit is occupied. This is because Mr. Bird found that HB 1417 prohibits local governments from interfering in the “landlord-tenant relationship” and “residential tenancies”, which under legal definitions exist only when a lease is signed and a rental home is occupied. Therefore, local governments may only mandate inspections of rental homes when they are unoccupied. As for application, the new proposal applies living and energy & water efficiency standards regulations to all rental properties, whereas the old programs were applied only to properties with four or fewer units. The opportunity to expand the program’s applications stems from the regulations being moved from the business code to the building code. According to both the City and County Attorney’s, state law preempts local governments from regulating large apartment complexes as businesses, but local governments may regulate building standards for all buildings within their jurisdiction via technical and administrative amendments to the Building Code.
The proposal was well-received by the Gainesville City Commission when it was presented at a City Commission Meeting, and the County had already directed staff to look into moving much of the current Residential Rental Unit Permit program into the Building Code. ACLC Staff has since met with both City and County staff to provide more details of the proposal and explain the legal pathway to implement it. The reception from both staffs were positive. We are cautiously optimistic they will come to the same or similar conclusions as the ACLC and present our proposed program as a viable option for the City and County Commission to adopt.
You can read the proposal/position statement below.
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