The ACLC will be considering and voting on a proposed amendment to our bylaws at the February 21st, 2023 General Member Meeting. You can review the proposed amendment below. The purpose of the amendment is twofold. First, the sections on “Respect and Dignity” and “Conflict Resolution” are intended to ensure every member feels comfortable participating in the ACLC’s work. Second, the remaining two sections are intended to bolster democracy within the ACLC.

Please take two easy actions from the comfort of your home. Sign UFF-UF’s petition to save tenure and submit a comment to the Board of Governors telling them to reject the proposed post-tenure review regulation! See UFF-UF President Paul Ortiz’ message below for details.

Special Report from ACLC Activist Austin Kee and Bobby Mermer

Fear of gentrification is rattling residents of the Holly Heights community, specifically residents of the buildings owned by SAR Apartment Capital. Miami-based SAR acquired the properties earlier this year and has since flooded the community with lease non-renewal notices, just as the telltale signs of gentrification are popping up in nearby neighborhoods. After receiving a call from Doretha, a concerned community leader, ACLC Coordinator Bobby Mermer and a small army of activists (Adolfho Romero, Austin Kee, C.G. Shields, Josh Papacek, Pam Paris, and Sheila Payne) canvassed most of the SAR-owned buildings over several weekends. Many of the residents were too frightened to speak to canvassers, fearing they would be removed from their homes in retaliation for speaking out. But enough residents shared their experience to establish a clear and disturbing pattern—Section 8 voucher holders are disproportionately being targeted for removal. All but one resident with a Section 8 voucher reported receiving a non-renewal notice or eviction, while all but one self-paying resident reported being offered a lease renewal (later, we learned of a second self-paying resident receiving a non-renewal). This is an alarming pattern. The stock of truly affordable rental housing in Gainesville is quickly dwindling, and Holly Heights is one of the few remaining communities where very low-income working families, the elderly, and the disabled can find an affordable place. The ACLC and community leaders at Holly Heights are fighting to ensure it stays that way.

Many of the units at Holly Heights are in varying states of disrepair. One row house had downspouts terminating on the second story. Yet another had an obviously leaky gutter wrapped precariously in a black trash bag, in some futile attempt to hold back the water from the second story balcony. That same unit saw many of its outdoor banisters replaced with a naked, bright yellow wood, a sign that the wood used was possibly untreated and ill-suited for outdoor use. Another unit’s soffit had collapsed within the upper patio. Another had fresh paint over wooden board where the windows should have been. From cursory glances into the interiors of many units, the external state of disrepair is reflected within. One woman’s unit had ill-fitted door seals, so hastily attached after a fresh coat of paint on a bubbling, rusted door that they had stuck to the door edge and pulled from the frame. A ceiling in another appeared to have water staining, drywall patches hastily smeared onto the surface. Vacancies dominate many of the row houses, but the vacant units stick out, pristine and freshly painted among their dilapidated neighbors, scattered remains of renovation piled at the curb.

Perhaps the sorry state of affairs is due to the ineptitude of property management. One tenant claimed that after weeks of inaction regarding water leaks from the AC handler, the property manager poured in pure bleach straight from the bottle in an attempt to clear the clogged drain line, in spite of protests from both the tenant and her bedridden, respiratory-distressed husband that the strong fumes were harmful. Yet, on the flip side of the coin, a different tenant only sang praises of the responsiveness of property management and the amenities of their recently renovated unit. If all anecdotes are to be believed, the property manager, Jordona, must be Jekyll and Hyde! But there is an identifiable pattern. The former tenant was Section 8, the latter was self-paying. At scale, there were significantly more maintenance complaints voiced by Section 8 and other voucher-holding tenants than from self-paying tenants. Sadly, this is a classic divide-and-conquer strategy that is often deployed to pit working class people with no public benefits against working class people receiving means-tested benefits. But make no mistake, gentrification will eventually touch those families who make too much to qualify for public assistance but too little to pay rising market rates.

In fact, many of the maintenance grievances aired by Section 8 voucher holders were indirectly corroborated by self-paying tenants, who acknowledged that SAR withheld maintenance and issued non-renewals to “bad neighbors”. There were various claims of overcrowding, hooliganism, vandalism, even claims of violence and threatening behavior. One interviewee claimed that homicide and sexual violence had increased dramatically under the prior property owner (Banta). Another claimed that a sexual predator had moved in next door to her, and has been non-renewed. Many of these tenants firmly believe that SAR is simply removing problematic individuals to improve the safety of the neighborhood. They also held a positive view of the private security hired by SAR, contrary to many of the housing voucher residents – including HUD-VASH (veterans’) housing voucher residents – who have consistently claimed that the private security was ineffectual at best, invasive at worst.

But that raises an interesting question: if these tenants are so problematic, why must SAR resort to underhanded tactics to remove them? If it is true that these tenants are destroying the property, actively committing crimes on the premises, and breaking rules in their leases with excessively large gatherings and housing undeclared persons, why did SAR not file police reports and complaints to the housing authority?

And the grievances don’t end with just tenants of SAR properties. A tenant of an independently owned row house among a sea of SAR properties, claims that SAR had been aggressively pursuing the purchase of the property. Having been repeatedly rebuked by the owner, SAR purportedly installed a camera in a vacant unit directly across from the property. It was independently verified that a white point light and a blinking red light characteristic of a recording camera can be easily seen in the open windows at night. SAR is clearly violating the tenants’ expectation of privacy—it is generally reasonable to have security cameras on private property for the purpose of monitoring the premises. But having the camera installed in a position that only monitors the premises of another property does not seem to be a legitimate security measure.

Many tenants were afraid to provide their names or file a formal complaint out of fear of reprisal. Tenants of SAR-owned buildings who were previously willing to speak with the ACLC and the media dodged and locked their doors when reporter Ethan Budowsky from WCJB arrived for interviews and to witness a community meeting organized by the ACLC. Tenants of the non-SAR building were visually uncomfortable being interviewed in the line of sight of the camera when Budowsky arrived, moving away from the front of their own home and out into the side street.

Current developments seem to have confirmed these fears. On Thursday, November 17th, around 4:45 PM, ACLC Coordinator Bobby Mermer received a phone call from a resident of a SAR-owned property in Holly Heights informing him they had just received a notice of an inspection occurring tomorrow. SAR’s property managers had put notices on doors that were back-dated to November 9th.  There was no maintenance emergency.  This is less than the 24 hour notice required by Miya’s law (Fla. Stat. 83.515), which was passed just this year. It is shameful for a company that boasts of being a “a national multifamily investment firm with over $180,000,000 of assets” to blatantly flout the minimal standards put in place by the Florida legislature.

SAR was well aware of the illegal nature of their planned inspections, quickly backing down after the ACLC notified the Alachua County Commission, area Housing Authorities, and the Alachua County Equal Opportunity Office.  SAR’s motives were likely as nefarious as the means: to scour homes for Section 8 program violations in an attempt to silence working families on social assistance benefits.  This attempt at retaliation against residents for organizing to stand up for their rights is unacceptable and in direct violation of Alachua County’s Human Rights Ordinance.

The ACLC will continue working with Holly Heights residents to fight gentrification, improve living conditions, and keep hard-working families in their homes. We will provide ACLC members and supporters with periodic updates.

On Wednesday, November 16th nearly 50 activists gathered outside of city hall steps for a rally organized by the ACLC before crowding into the city commission’s special hearing, where the Gainesville Police Department attempted to justify its need for continuing the canine unit. Inside, there was standing room only. Citizens and activists organized by the ACLC, Florida Prisoner’s Solidarity, and activist Dani Chanzes were there to ask the Gainesville Commission to abolish the canine unit, noting the long history of dogs used as a weapon of terror against Black men, and most recently against Terrell Bradley. 

While GPD insisted the canine unit was needed to “chase down rapists” and find missing persons, GPD’s own presentation confirmed the dogs are used primarily against non-violent offenders (most of whom are disproportionately Black men), and activists were quick to remind GPD that more often than not, the police delay investigating rape and have other means to find missing persons. GPD said the dogs are “fun” for the community, while activists relayed the pleas of the community to end an out-of-date practice that goes back to slave patrols, noting this history is more important than any benefit from the dogs’ public appearances. ACLC Justice Committee activist Nicole La Roque recited findings from the internal affairs investigation of the Terrell Bradley incident, in which officers texted each other about taking the dogs hunting on the “eastside.” Finally, activists pointed out that in 2022, more humane options exist for apprehending suspects. The commission directed staff to investigate alternatives and voted to table the issue until the new commission is sworn in.

For background on the issues with GPD’s K-9 Unit, please read Sheila Payne’s and Bobby Mermer’s op-ed in the Independent Florida Alligator at this link.

Since mid-July, the ACLC Criminal Justice “Reform” Committee has been working in partnership with the Sunshine Forum, a group of UF students dedicated to improving the lives of Floridians through legislation, on a proposal that would provide 15 minutes of free phone calls per day for inmates of the Alachua County Jail.

The official Sunshine Forum/ACLC proposal is almost complete. But we would like to share the current draft with you to keep you informed on the progress of this campaign to make the Alachua County Jail more humane, reduce recidivism, and minimize the harm faced by families and friends by the incarceration of their loved ones.

Final proposal with complete research coming soon!

At our September Membership Meeting we hosted a panel on the ACLC-sponsored Gainesville Renters’ Rights Ordinance and similar legislation we are sponsoring at the county-level The panel was Moderated by Safe and Affordable Housing Committee Chair Sheila Payne. Panelists were: Gainesville City Commissioner Adrian Hayes-Santos, Special Adviser to the City Manager (Gainesville) Andrew Persons, Acting Alachua County Assistant County Manager Missy Daniels, and Greta Moreau from Alachua County Rental Housing Codes. Watch below!

Stefan Samarripas, Local Policy Manager for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), recently published a blog post reporting:

“Renter households that were behind on energy bills were also more likely to report being behind on rent when being surveyed, according to an analysis averaging experimental Census Bureau data collected since July 2021. Our analysis of that new data, from last month’s Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, reveals that 33% of roughly 44 million renter households across the United States were behind on their energy bills in the past year. Among those behind on energy bills nearly every month, almost half were also behind on rent.

Energy efficiency upgrades could help renters keep up with these bills by lowering monthly energy costs, but property owners must approve these improvements and are unlikely to do so amid reduced rental income. Recent research indicates that owners seeing decreased rental income from their properties since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic are less likely to invest in their buildings. Policymakers and utility regulators can address this problem with increased funding for energy efficiency programs targeting rental properties that are home to energy-insecure households. ”

You can read the full blog post here.

Our community has a severe shortage of affordable housing. With 3,000 new residents projected to be moving into Alachua County every year, the Alachua County Labor Coalition supports a variety of measures to help increase the overall number of affordable housing units in the future.

However, we also believe this community must address existing housing costs for our community’s most vulnerable residents now. Renters in this community are due basic rights and protections such as a safe place to live, affordable utility bills, freedom from discrimination and rental deposit theft, and disclosure of their rights and responsibilities as tenants.

We believe that these aims can best be achieved through a comprehensive renters’ rights ordinance. The proposal that we have put forward — in consultation with city and county commissioners and Florida Legal Services as well as landlords, renters, neighborhood associations, faith communities, civic organizations, and other stakeholders throughout our community — is revenue-neutral and based upon existing programs and services with a demonstrated track record of success.

Our proposed ordinance poses a threat to no one except landlords with a pattern of misconduct, and in fact levels the playing field for the majority of landlords throughout our community who strive to keep their housing livable.

Universal, low-cost licensing and inspections of rental units should be mandatory. Renters reasonably fear calling code enforcement. ACLC continues to get calls about serious safety code infractions that, when reported to authorities, too often leads to an eviction notice.

Under this proposal, inspections would be carried out by certified inspectors to ensure the safety of the dwelling, including structural integrity, working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, proper locks, electrical outlets, and other basic safety standards.

Energy/water efficiency standards in rental units are one of the most immediate ways to decrease overall cost of living for many folks. These standards have been developed by energy experts and could be assigned a point value, allowing landlords to choose from a range of options to achieve low-cost, high return on investment efficiency upgrades. A layer of insulation in the attic and high efficiency toilets, for instance, would go a long way to helping lower renter utility costs.

Safety and efficiency standards could not only save lives, but they could also help reduce total housing costs by addressing the dramatic inequities in efficiency between owner-occupied and rental properties.

In acknowledgment of the amount of rental housing to be inspected and brought up to code and the added workload and expense, landlords will be given a generous window of compliance. Funds have already been allocated for efficiency upgrades in the form of grants or low-interest loans, depending on whether the property is kept affordable.

People deserve protection from discrimination, and discrimination in housing is particularly insidious. The Labor Coalition is pleased that both the City of Gainesville and Alachua County have adopted protections against discrimination in housing based upon source of income, citizenship status and other identified protected classes.

Another chronic problem identified by renters is the practice of some landlords to routinely deny the return of security deposits to their tenants, regardless of cause. This practice leaves students and low-income tenants with little recourse and creates tremendous financial instability.

The Alachua County Labor Coalition supports an arbitration program modeled on the county’s highly-successful wage recovery ordinance. This program would be designed to offer a fast and cheap alternative to longer, more drawn-out court proceedings and would be free to tenants and landlords and available upon either party’s request.

Both landlords and tenants would benefit from increased education, and this education can be easily provided during initial discussions about a rental agreement. Licensed landlords would provide tenants with basic information about their dwelling units, including compliance with local codes, the previous 12 months’ utility consumption or efficiency rating, and other educational materials that describe renters’ rights as well as their responsibilities as tenants.

Alachua County is now discussing implementing the Safe and Healthy Housing Renters Rights ordinance after observing the roll out of the City of Gainesville Rental Housing Ordinance. As before, many lobbyists for corporate landlords are testifying that this has moved too fast, though it has been over two years of many meetings and energy efficiency standards will not be implemented till 2026.

Rental property, like any other business such as a restaurant or salon, should be licensed and inspected for safe conditions. Why should low-income residents and their children live in shoddy, dangerous surroundings?

Sheila Payne and Jason Fults are members of the Alachua County Labor Coalition Housing Committee.