BY OMAR RODRÍGUEZ ORTIZ
On Tuesday — International Women’s Day — more than 100 people gathered outside the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami to demand new rights for tenants — such as mandating landlords to give a “fair” notice before increasing their rent. The crowd also sought added protections for domestic workers, such as the creation of a fund to help with COVID-19 relief efforts. Carrying signs — some said “fight poverty, not the poor” and “housing is a human right, and we won’t go without a fight” — protesters let their voices be heard. “This is abusive and we need help,” María Rubí, 57, said in Spanish to the large group, which included elected officials such as Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and county commissioners Eileen Higgins and Raquel Regalado. Rubí was referring to steep rent hikes that have caused her financial hardship.
Until recently, Rubí was just another tenant trying to make ends meet in a Hialeah apartment building, where she has lived with her daughter Rachel for the past 25 years. Then it was purchased by a Miami-based real estate firm. She and other tenants were given about a month to prepare for rental hikes of as much as 65 percent.
The experience transformed Rubí, a Nicaraguan immigrant who earns $14 an hour as a cashier, into a vocal advocate for tenants’ rights. In January, Rubí joined her neighbors in protests outside the 20-unit apartment building at 1501 W. 42nd St. in Hialeah as well as outside their landlord’s office in Brickell, seemingly without success. But on Tuesday, she had elected officials listening to what she had to say. Levine Cava told Rubí and the rest of the protesters that salaries are not keeping up with housing costs. “We have to do better,” she said. Some landlords are “scandalously increasing rent,” further deteriorating the county’s housing crisis, Higgins told the crowd.
“These people are greedy,” she said. Santra Denis, executive director of the Miami Workers Center, a grassroots organization that supports tenants, workers and families in South Florida, said the county must cap the amount of money that landlords can charge tenants for rental application fees. “There are people who are spending hundreds of dollars applying to rent an apartment and they don’t get their money back,” she said.
NEW PROTECTIONS FOR TENANTS AND DOMESTIC WORKERS
Black and immigrant women have been battling the spread of COVID-19 as domestic and healthcare workers, all while being the most vulnerable to evictions in a city that is increasingly becoming more unaffordable to live in, according to the Miami Workers Center. Landlords with Miami-Dade residential properties filed at least 11,279 eviction lawsuits last year, according to the Community Justice Project, a Miami-based community of lawyers that collaborates with grassroots groups in low-income communities of color.
Now, tenant advocates demand county officials support:
- A Tenant Bill of Rights
- Mandating “fair” notices before rent increases
- A cap on rental application fees
- Providing free legal services to tenants
- Expanding the county’s human right ordinance for all domestic workers
- Creating a “recovery fund” for workers who “excluded from COVID-19 relief efforts.”
MIAMI-DADE LEGISLATION COULD SOON BECOME LAW
And some of these demands could be met soon by the county.
On March 15, the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners could give final approval to a legislation that would require landlords to issue a 60-day written notice for rental increases of more than 5% when the lease ends or for month-to-month tenancies, but first there will be public hearing at the Public Housing and Community Services Committee on Thursday, March 10, at 9 a.m. in the Commission Chambers.
The legislation filed by County Commissioner Eileen Higgins follows the lead of Miami Beach, which imposed a similar rule within city limits last month, and Hialeah, which on Feb. 22 advanced legislation to impose its own notice requirement for notable rent increases.
The countywide legislation, initially approved on March 1, would also:
- Extend from 30 to 60 days the waiting period before landlords can file evictions in month-to-month tenancies
- Create a “Miami-Dade County Tenant’s Bill of Rights.”
- Create an Office of Housing Advocacy.
- Provide a tenant information helpline.
“I know this doesn’t solve the problem of landlords being overly greedy these days, but at least it gives people time to prepare,” Higgins said. But the fight has not come without losses for the group of Hialeah tenants. At least four residents have already vacated their units because they could not afford the new rents, tenants have said, and their landlord has filed an eviction lawsuit against one of them, court records show.
“If we don’t stand up for ourselves, who will?” Rubí told the crowd.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article258929493.html#storylink=cpy