St. Pete Protesters Demand Rent Control Out Front of City Hall
In the summer of 2019, then-St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman laid out a housing affordability plan set to begin the following year. The plan is expected to impact around 7,000 households through $60 million in spending over the course of a decade, improving and expanding both new and existing affordable housing options within the city. However, upon closer inspection, the plan is nothing more than a trickle-down, corporate handout scheme with progressive trappings. Here are 5 big reasons why St. Pete’s 10-year housing plan needs to be thrown out and redesigned completely.
1. The Plan’s Nexus Study was Conducted by Real Estate Developers
Imagine if the city commissioned a public health study to be conducted by a cigarette company, or an environmental study conducted by big oil. Allowing real estate developers to craft policy which is supposed to combat gentrification is as stupid as letting an arsonist tell you how to put out a fire. Unsurprisingly, the city’s Nexus Study focuses exclusively on ways the city can increase developer profits & subsidies in order to make housing more affordable. The report completely overlooks the complicity of the private sector in the rapid onslaught of gentrification, and fails to explore things like public ownership and market controls as options for preserving housing affordability.
2. The Plan Doesn’t Prioritize Black Families, the Poor or Those Currently Homeless
The plan is geared toward a wide range of households, including those earning up to 120% of the Area Median Income (AMI), or $99,000 a year. However, only a tiny number of renter households on the higher end of this spectrum are considered “cost burdened”, meaning they pay over 30% of their income on rent. By comparison, a whopping 69% of renter households in St. Pete who earn $41,000 a year or less (<50% AMI) pay over half of their income on rent. Yet, only a quarter of the new rental units funded through the plan so far have been aimed at families making this lower level of income. What’s worse is the metric for calculating the area median income is tied to inflation, meaning it increases every year regardless of whether your wages have gone up. Many families who need help the most make too little to qualify for units subsidized through the plan. In addition, the AMI for Black renters in St. Pete is 33% less than the average, meaning these families are at an even greater disadvantage of obtaining housing through the plan. In a city where the vestiges of Jim Crow have persisted well into the 21st century, the affordable housing plan is nothing more than an extension of the St. Pete’s racist status quo.
3. Affordable Housing Only Stays That Way for a Limited Number of Years
Affordable housing requirements attached to most city funding allows the owner to jack rents up to market rate in as little as 15-30 years after it’s built. That means the $60 million of taxpayer cash being poured into the pockets of wealthy developers & landlords doesn’t result in a permanent return for our investment. When the affordability requirements inevitably expire, the city must bribe the owner with another big wad of cash so residents won’t lose their homes.
4. Lack of Public Ownership and Accountability Lead to Slum Conditions
Despite public funds being poured into units built under the plan, everything will remain privately owned and operated, usually by a big for-profit developer and/or corporate landlord. In order to maintain profits, these private owners will skirt tenant safety and comfort, leading to slum-like conditions. In St. Pete, the city recently cut child-care services in order to dump $1.4 million into the pockets of the new owner of the Citrus Grove Apartments in Bethel Heights. For decades, residents there have faced deplorable conditions, like no hot water, rodents, electrical hazards and more. The property has changed ownership at least 3 different times since 2012, with the most recent being this past October when it was sold to a massive California-based corporate landlord who owns over 25,000 rental units across the country. Instead of the city government buying the property outright to ensure good living conditions for tenants, they've decided instead to throw more money at private ownership in hopes that this time things will be different for the residents at Citrus Grove. Yet without public ownership, we've been shown time and again that there is no way to hold landlords accountable.
5. It Comes Nowhere Near Meeting St. Pete's Housing Needs
In St. Pete, there are just over 20,000 renter households who pay more than 30% of their income on rent. Only 829 new rental units have received funding through the plan so far, the vast majority of which have not even been built yet. This amounts to around 4% of the need. It’s clear that building our way out of the housing emergency is not the solution. Of the 7,000 “affordable” homes expected to be built or preserved through the plan, nearly half come from the city backing down from threatening to steal homes with outstanding code violations from working-class homeowners, something that should have never been happening in the first place.
The longer the city drags it's feet in implementing solutions that have the greatest effect on the majority renters -- such as rent control and right to counsel -- the longer families will continue to be forced onto the streets and out of our community altogether. The city wants you to believe they're doing the best they can, but that's not true. They're doing the best they can for big real estate, developers and landlords, not us.
The solution to all of this is simple: we need funding for housing, a hell of a lot more. And when the government invests this public money into housing, it should be under public control and ownership. The city already owns and operates a 76-unit apartment complex just outside of downtown called the Jamestown Apartments, and could easily allocate new funding to begin buying up apartment buildings across the city to expand this city-owned enterprise. Apartments with numerous code complaints could be expropriated through eminent domain to drive slumlords out of our city for good. Hundreds of good paying, union jobs would be created, with an end goal of guaranteed housing for all residents. However, Mayor Welch and certain members of city council are reluctant to do so because this would harm the profits of their political donors. They would rather continue to coddle slumlords and force people to cram in with family, live in cars and sleep out on the streets instead of putting together a housing plan which puts people over profits.
It's important we don't allow these disgusting displays of corruption cause us to become jaded. Knowledge is a weapon, and the more we know, the better equipped we are to fight back!
**The developers have public relations teams working round the clock to crank out fake news and information surrounding the causes and "solutions" to the housing crisis sweeping our city. That's why it's vital that you share information like this with family, co-workers and neighbors. If you enjoy the information we're providing you, please consider a donation:
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