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The undersigned faculty, students, and staff at the University of Florida reject the recent policy announcement of a move to partial face-to-face teaching for the 2021 spring semester. Instead, we support continuing to teach remotely next semester, thus fulfilling all of our obligations with proper regard for the safety of the university community. Faculty moved their courses to remote formats in March 2020 to respond to the public health emergency associated with COVID-19. The format is not ideal, and no one, least of all faculty, sees it as a permanent method. But under these very unusual and dangerous circumstances it works well and ensures the safety and well-being of everyone involved.

The public health emergency has not ended. COVID-19 spread is associated with people aged 18-30, the age of our students, who live together, socialize, and are not tested with any regularity. COVID-related deaths are closely associated with older people, that is, a large percentage of our faculty. There is also mounting medical evidence of long-term effects associated with the virus, including lasting damage to critical organs. With the governor’s policy of opening up businesses such as bars without a mask mandate, we should anticipate another surge of infections. The best medical expertise predicts a nation-wide increase with the onset of colder weather. Masks and distancing mandates on campus, which everyone knows have not been followed, will not produce requisite safety. On the contrary, the premature move to partial classroom teaching will compromise it all the more. Evidence suggests that infected air can be spread throughout buildings that, like those on the UF campus, lack adequate ventilation, a danger not addressed in any of the discussions that we have seen.

The demand for partial face-to-face teaching is both poorly conceived and reckless. It offers no pedagogical advantages and presents additional challenges that will have adverse effects on teaching and learning. A small minority of students will take classes in live format but not most. The majority will continue to take classes in remote format. Hybrid classes require guidance, training, and additional technical resources to be successful. With little thought devoted to implementation, this format will diminish both the live and remote experiences. Most important, such a plan endangers the health and indeed the lives of UF faculty, staff, students, and their families in Gainesville and throughout the state.

Policies concerning education and health should be discussed and agreed upon by the faculty and medical experts most knowledgeable about practicality and impact before any talk of implementation. The policy has already caused serious worry in the campus community. It should never have gotten this far. It should be dropped immediately.

On October 9th, President Fuchs announced that the University of Florida would be reopening in the spring and launching in-person “safe” face to face learning. Fuchs insisted that students have guided this decision, but in reality politics and greed are the only things guiding this decision. Moreover, Fuchs continues on to say that the only way the University can retain full funding and the jobs of its employees is by reopening. This is a false choice. 

According to the University of Florida’s 2018-2019 financial report “The University of Florida has a strong and diverse revenue base which serves to protect the University from over-reliance on one source of revenue”. A sizable 39% of the university’s funding came from non-operating revenues in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. These non-operating revenues “are not generated by the university’s primary, ongoing operations”. These non-operating revenues are just one of the many sources of funding that UF could potentially use to prevent furloughs. Therefore, UF funding should not be used as the excuse for a spring campus reopening and medical science could then dictate the timetable of a safe reopening for all. 

Besides non-operating revenues, the salaries of the top four highest paid administrators amount to almost three million dollars, putting an enormous burden on UF’s payroll. Instead of resorting to furloughing faculty and staff in the middle of a pandemic, the budget can easily be balanced by furloughing those who make the most and do not have direct contact with student instruction. President Fuchs earns $926,000 and is the highest paid president amongst Florida state public universities. The next highest UF salaries are paid to CFO Christopher Cowen who makes $700,000, Vice President of Development and Alumni Affairs Tom Mitchell with a salary of $614,000 and COO Charlie Lane with a salary of $500,000, just to mention a few. To give some context, assistant librarians make $60,000, adjunct professors make $43,000, administrative assistants make $39,000, custodians make $21,540, teaching assistants make $21,573 and lab techs make $13/hr.  

It would not be imprudent to say that the ones that should be getting furloughed or receiving any type of pay cuts should be those at the top. They have not suffered the economic consequences nor the risks of working throughout this pandemic like UF’s workers who make the University run. The custodians, maintenance workers, cafeteria workers, librarians, IT staff, instructors and many more who may be subject to furloughs; yet they are the employees who make the UF campus function. Our campus’s operation is dependent on these very essential people, not President Fuchs. This is why we need to fight for UF’s hardworking employees and cut the outrageous salaries of the highest paid at UF. Furlough Fuchs first and fight for the working class! 

Cristina Cabada Sidawi, UF Student and Coordinator at the Alachua County Labor Coalition.

Join us on Tuesday, November 17 at 6:00pm for our November Membership Meeting for a roundtable discussion on the University of Florida’s reckless reopening plans and the consequences it will have on UF workers and students as well the greater Gainesville community.

We will be joined by panelists Fi Stewart-Taylor, with UF GAU and UF Workers For A Safe Reopening , Bobby Mermer, Co-President of UF GAU, Rachel Khoury, External Vice President of the Gator Chapter of the NAACP and Paul Ortiz, President of UFF-UF.

Find the Facebook event here

Zoom link ufl.zoom.us/j/91068714688

Read our Criminal Justice Committees Report on Alachua County Court Services here

The goal of our report is to highlight the failures of Court Services as it stands and offers reforms on how to change this institution to work in favor of our community and in line with its goals of decarceration and recidivism.

Join us for our September Membership meeting on Tuesday, September 29th at 6:00pm where we focus on this report. We’ll have a panel conversation with activists and organizer Danielle Chanzes and Chanae Jackson on monetary bonds and what we can do to push back against the (in)justice system.

The Alachua County Tenants Association is looking for volunteers for Oct 4th to join us in surveying different neighborhoods in Gainesville. On Oct 3rd we will be providing a workshop over Zoom to learn how to survey.

We are working hard to make this happen. We will be organizing and talking to tenants from different neighborhoods on financial and legal services that are available to them. We want to empower the tenants in their communities and not feel that they have no control over their financial situation and potential eviction case. We are looking to go into the locations in which are hotspots for evictions.

If you’re interested in helping, please send us an email us at:
acta@laborcoalition.org

Join us for the Survey Training on Oct. 3rd at 2pm via Zoom:
https://ufl.zoom.us/j/95373023535

No prior experience is required.

We just wanted to make sure you heard that we had another 7-0 vote in favor of the Renters’ Rights ordinance at the City Commission this week, despite continued encouragement from the Realtors Association to “slow down” (i.e., do nothing).

Thanks to your advocacy and some stellar work by our Commissioners (particularly Adrian Hayes- Santos and Reina Saco), we have just passed what is probably one of the strongest, most comprehensive sets of protections for renters that you are likely to find.  Our victories at the City on this issue include:

• A reduction in the cost of landlord licenses (which we advocated for), but an expansion of the licensing to many more rental properties throughout the city that did not previously have to be licensed.  In exchange for those licenses, properties will now be inspected and held to a new, enhanced property maintenance code as well as basic energy and water efficiency standards which will keep renters safe and help them save money on their utility bills.  Previously, both renters and landlords received nothing in exchange for the landlord licensing fee.
• Stronger anti-discrimination protections in housing, specifically around citizenship status and source of income.
• Improved communication requirements for landlords so that tenants know more about both their rights as a tenant and the condition of the property that they’re renting.
• A City-sponsored mediation program to help address the rampant rental deposit theft taking place in this community.

All of these changes will of course take some time to roll out, but we are very excited and optimistic about what this will mean for working people in this community.  Our fight is not over, not by a long shot, and we will continue to push for these same changes countywide.

We will be following up with an information session for the public in the coming weeks as well as discussions about where we go from here.  We welcome your input in the meantime.  For now though, THANK YOU again to everyone who supported this epic win through your letters to the editor, social media shares, and calls and emails to our City Commission!

Solidarity,
The ACLC Safe & Healthy Housing campaign

Written by ACLC member and former city commissioner
Published in The Gainesville Sun on August 28th, 2020

Whether you rent or own your home, I hope that you have a place that feels safe and protects you from the elements. Everyone needs a place that provides these basic needs. 

When a home does not meet basic health and safety standards, who is responsible for the repair or corrective action? As a homeowner and owner of a rental property, I know that I am responsible for the care of both homes.

After serving as one of your city commissioners for six years, I have observed some interesting attitudes and relationships between the governing side of the city and the people it serves. There is the push and pull of demands to do everything or nothing.

Our City Commission took up the discussion of housing and renters’ rights in 2018 and held open meetings to look at problems and possible solutions. The primary focus was on health and safety in the living environment.

There was also an interest in looking at the lack of housing that serves lower-income residents. And there was a recognition that low-rent housing was some of the worst in meeting basic standards of health and safety.

Those meetings were very well attended by those who are advocating for better protections for tenants, as well as those in the business of owning and managing rentals. The advocates for renters’ rights and safe home environments made their point by describing homes in deplorable condition, and cases of reported need for repairs that went ignored.

There was also a point made that homes that have not been maintained are often homes with excessively high utility bills. The contributions to the discussion from the business side of housing issues helped provide some balance in perspective. 

A simple solution, one would think, is for the tenant to be able to contact the owner or manager and request repairs or some attention to the condition of appliances in the home. But too many tenants do not feel safe to report their problems without fear of having their lease cancelled. 

Members of the business side of the housing market pointed out that any policy that puts the requirement upon investors to make repairs or update appliances in their properties will have a negative effect by raising rents. They also pointed out cases where tenants were at fault for the lack of maintenance and abuse of properties.

There are many points that can be made that serve to deflect the responsibility of care from the landlord or manager. What is needed is for both sides to come to some agreements on solutions.

At times there was an agreement that there are some properties in poor condition. One property manager expressed support for the city to step in and tell some property owners that they needed to make some repairs. There was also an acknowledgment that Codes Enforcement was able to have some positive results when they were able to access the interior of a property and that the high majority of properties are in good condition. 

When improvements are made to a property, there is an increased likelihood for a win-win outcome for both owner and tenant. For the owner there will be fewer calls for repairs needed in the middle of the night, and a higher return on their investment when they go to sell. For the tenant there will be less anxiety for having to live in shoddy housing and maybe even having more appreciation for the owner.

The City Commission has developed an ordinance that will open the doors of rentals for inspection from various private or public professionals. Most rentals are in passable condition. An inspection process will identify homes that are in need of attention and repair. The intent is to improve living conditions for all our residents.

I was disappointed to see the flyer that my Realtors’ association sent out ahead of the City Commission’s meeting. In the Gainesville-Alachua County Association of Realtors political action committee flyer, there was no recognition of the problem and no identification of a solution that real estate professionals could, would or should support.

Many of the solutions come down to improved education on both sides of the business. This includes landlords, property managers, investors and tenants. This includes you and me.

This discussion will not end with the City Commission. I do hope that there will be a continuation of the search for solutions.

3 years in the making, finally the Renters’ Rights Ordinance is up for a vote in the Gainesville City Commission. The commissioners are getting a deluge of letters and phone calls from corporate property managers and realtors to stop this 3 year effort to protect renters from unsafe housing.

Safe and healthy housing is not too much to ask for! We need your help, more now than ever to ensure every renter in Alachua is protected.

Ways you can help:

1) Writing a letter to The Gainesville City Commission in support of this ordinance by clicking here
2)Attending the September 3rd meeting where the City Commission will have its first vote on this ordinance
3) Calling other supporters to encourage them to contact the Commission as well
4) Submitting a Letter to the Editor to the Gainesville Sun in support of renters’ rights

The ACLC has been working with the Evictions Lab to establish a baseline and better understand this looming crisis. Please find our results here

The ACLC has put together an evictions’ task force to help with this crisis. We have a team that is sending information packets to all who have evictions filed against them. We also have a team who will follow up with canvassing a week after our packets are sent to them.

Email us at info@laborcoalition.org if you’re interested in getting involved. We need all the help we can get!