ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Renters like Dylan Dames still feel the pain of an affordable housing crisis in St. Petersburg.
“It’s very bleak,” Dames said. “It’s very bleak.”
He lives it himself and now experiences it through others as an organizer with the group Faith in Florida.
“One of our campaign managers — he was a really, really strong part of our work — had to move out of the city because he was living in his car,” he said.
Thursday, there was another setback in the fight to help struggling renters in St. Pete.
The St. Petersburg City Council repealed its Tenants Bill of Rights, which was approved years ago to protect renters from eviction and discrimination.
“It undoes the work of the people on the ground,” Dames said.
Councilman Richie Floyd said the council’s hands were tied.
A new state law, House Bill 1417, preempted the protections, which meant the Bill of Rights had to be repealed.
“Recently, the legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill that made it illegal for cities to regulate the landlord-tenant relationship,” Floyd explained. “We can’t regulate just general tenants and landlords anymore.”
Floyd, however, thinks there is some wiggle room and there are things St. Pete council members can do to protect renters.
First, he wants to figure out a way to protect them from landlords that refuse to accept government vouchers, like Section 8.
“I’ve seen, personally, people discriminated based off of the source of their income. They have guaranteed income, but they’re a voucher holder, and landlords don’t want to deal with it,” he said. “It’s not fair for people who have money to pay for housing to not be able to get housing just because people don’t want to deal with it.”
Thursday, he asked the city staff to explore how it could protect people citywide from discrimination, including housing discrimination, without violating state law.
William Kilgore, an organizer with The St. Pete Tenants Union, hopes the city can pass that protection.
“We’re very excited about that,” he said. “What we really need to see is that we have strong protections and that they’re enacted quickly.”
Floyd hopes his anti-discrimination ordinance can be drawn up, debated, and passed in no more than six months.