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.
