More than 1.5 million Florida renters are about to lose rights – unless Ron DeSantis does something very soon
See the long list of local renter-protection laws likely to be dissolved if Ron DeSantis decides to let a controversial, landlord-backed bill go into effect.
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More than 1.5 million renters across Florida will lose important consumer-protection rights — unless Gov. Ron DeSantis takes action within the next 48 hours.
That’s the amount of time the Republican governor and presidential candidate has remaining to decide whether he will sign or veto a controversial bill that would dissolve local renter-protection laws in at least 30 communities around the state.
The sweeping legislation (House Bill 1417) was lobbied through Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature this spring by, among others, the Florida Apartment Association, a front group funded by apartment companies such as Camden Housing Trust and Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc.
The bill was formally sent to DeSantis on June 14, giving the governor 15 days to decide whether to sign or veto it.
That means DeSantis has until the end of the day Thursday to act. And if he does nothing, the bill becomes law — just the same as as if he’d signed it.
All told, the bill is expected to undo local laws in at least 30 cities and counties that provide various rights to renters, from the right to two months’ warning before a rent increase to the right to pay with federal housing vouchers without fear of discrimination.
It would strip rights from renters in seven of Florida’s largest counties — including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Alachua — that together are home to nearly 1.5 million of the roughly 2.7 million renting households in Florida, according to data compiled by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies at the University of Florida.
Thousands more renters living in cities beyond those counties — from Daytona Beach to Naples — would also lose local protections.
During the session, lobbyists for the apartment association compiled a long list of the city and county ordinances targeted for elimination under HB 1417. That list was provided to Florida lawmakers during the legislative debate. And the Florida House of Representatives finally released a copy of that list Tuesday, in response to a public-records request.
You can see the full list here:
How do you spell Neo-Feudalism? HB-1417.