Rent Control Protest, City Hall Sleep-In Planned In St. Petersburg

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Protesters demanding rent control in St. Petersburg are hosting an emergency sleep-in outside city hall this week.

Organized by the St. Petersburg Tenants Union, Faith in Florida, and The Party for Socialism and Liberation in Tampa Bay, the groups will gather Wednesday around 7 p.m. and remain at city hall through Thursday morning, when the St. Pete City Council convenes at 9 a.m.

“There are a lot of protests where we’re on the megaphones and we’re marching — and we might do some of that — but we want this to be more of an interpersonal event,” organizer Jack Wallace told Patch. “Bring your stories. Bring your housing horror stories or just your voice in general.”

Organizers were inspired by an overnight protest in downtown Sarasota last month in reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, ending access to safe and legal abortion rights for many in the United States.

• Related Story: Rent Control To Go On Nov. 8 Tampa Ballot; City Council Votes 6-1

“That gave us a really good idea of ‘Hey, let’s do this in St. Pete for housing rights, for rent control,’” Wallace said. “We thought it was really impactful…There was a lot of swapping stories, intimate personal details about their lives, maybe the situations that led them to need an abortion. We were just really struck and moved by the stories people were telling. We wanted the same thing to happen, but around housing.”

Some attending the sleep-in plan to speak out during the public comment portion of the city council meeting. A discussion about creative options for rental stabilization in the city, proposed by Councilor Deborah Figgs-Sanders, is on the agenda Thursday. There’s also a public hearing planned on a potential referendum item that would offer tax breaks to new and expanding businesses in the city.

Both are matters of interest to those protesting overnight, he said.

Like many cities in Florida, rents have increased significantly in St. Petersburg in recent years. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Sunshine City as of Aug. 1 was $2,050 — a 35 percent increase over the same time last year — according to Rent.com.

At the heart of the issue is “corporate price gouging,” Wallace said. But local leaders “frame it as a problem of supply and demand. They say we just need more rental units available. The supply needs to go up so the demand is less and that is not the case.”

In St. Petersburg, the rental vacancy rate is 8.8 percent in February, according to Point2Homes.com.

“A lot of these are basically being held back for profit-seeking motives,” Wallace said. “If you worry about the prices of rent falling, what do you do? Restrict 10 percent of your inventory to keep prices high.”

Despite the number of new housing developments in the city, they’re not adding many new affordable options for renters, he added. “A lot of these new places being built are not affordable, because it’s not very lucrative to build homes for the destitute. It’s much more profitable to build apartment stock for people making $80,000 a year and can afford whatever rental increase comes their way.”

And the developments that are specifically built as affordable housing will remain affordable for just a limited amount of time due to the language in their contracts with the city, the organizer said. “They return to market rate in 15 to 30 years. We’re giving developers money to make it more affordable for people and then they can jack it up to market rate at that point, and we have no say in what is done with these properties.”

St. Petersburg has fallen behind other Florida municipalities, such as Tampa and Orange County, when it comes to rent stabilization, Wallace said. The Tampa City Council recently voted to put rent control on the Nov. 8 ballot for a referendum vote.

He hopes St. Petersburg will follow suit. Even then, rent control is just a temporary measure, he said.

“We’re fighting for rent control today and guaranteed public housing funded by and created by the city tomorrow,” he said.