Florida’s rigged economy is responsible for an eviction crisis among working class
How badly is Florida’s economy rigged against the working class?
If you work in the low-wage service economy, as many Floridians do, it’s unlikely you can afford to buy a home. That means you have to rent.
But if you fall behind on your rent payments — as many service workers did during the pandemic — you have just five days after getting a legal summons to pay the landlord what’s owed.
Five days to come up with possibly thousands of dollars. Otherwise, you’re automatically in default and facing eviction.
Contrast that with homeowners, who have far more time to make good on what they owe before losing their homes.
That inequity was among the findings in the first installment of “Locked Out,” a threepart Orlando Sentinel special report detailing the conditions that have turned Florida into possibly the least-friendly state in the nation for renters.
The first “Locked Out” article told the heartbreaking story of the Bennett family, a hardworking mom and dad with five kids who were evicted from their apartment last year when COVID-19 shut down the economy. Now they’re living in an Orlando hotel room, all seven family members sharing two beds.
A second installment in the series focused on Bathsheba Collingwood, who’s struggling to avoid eviction, an outcome that’s far more likely to befall Black families in Florida.
Our state has loads of vulnerable renters, the casualties of laws and policies that encourage a low-wage economy while depriving low-income, working-class families of the safety net they need when things go bad.
State and local governments spend millions upon millions of dollars every year to promote and subsidize the leisure and hospitality industry and the low-wage jobs they generate. Florida’s addiction to tourism is a significant reason why Florida remains mired in the bottom tier of states for household income.
According to the website Governing. com, Florida was one of just seven states where — with inflation factored in — the median hourly wage actually fell during the nine-year period from 2007-2016. It’s true the state’s minimum wage in Florida has increased $2.50 since 2005, according to the Sentinel’s report, but that averages out to an increase of just 17 cents extra per hour per year.
While wages stagnated or fell, the inventory of rental units costing less than $1,000 per month dropped. Today, about one in every four renters pays more than half their salary just to keep a roof over their heads. Imagine if 50 cents out of every dollar you earned went exclusively to shelter, before child care, clothes, food, transportation and utilities.
Meanwhile, the goal of buying a home instead of renting one is becoming more unattainable with each month that housing prices continue their insane rise. In April alone the median value of a metro Orlando home jumped by $10,000, from $285,000 to $295,000.
Rents skyrocket. Homes prices get farther out of reach. Wages languish.
None of this is sustainable. But Florida’s Republicans, who control state government top to bottom, not only refuse to even acknowledge there’s a problem, they’re making a fundamentally flawed system worse by tearing off the few economic bandages that keep things together.
A new law passed during this year’s legislative session will permanently cut in half the amount of money from a trust fund that’s supposed to be fully dedicated to affordable housing that might have helped families like the Bennetts leave their hotel room and move into a real home.
Another new law extends the state sales tax to include online purchases, but every nickel of that new money will go toward a tax break for businesses, not to help families.
And the Legislature just completed a special session to pass new gambling laws that will generate some $500 million a year, but lawmakers refused to consider dedicating even a portion of that money to housing or aiding the poor once the money starts coming.
Such systematic neglect of Florida’s working-class population keeps with the tradition of previous legislative sessions, where the well-being of working families is sacrificed to create laws that benefit business and moneyed special interests.
Laws like the one that gives renters just five days to pony up back rent or face eviction so landlords can make room for new tenants.
The most significant boost for the working class in recent memory came not from politicians but from voters, who changed the constitution last year to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026.
An increased minimum wage will help. Some.
But it does nothing to repair the structural flaws in Florida’s economy that force working-class families to constantly live on the financial edge.
If evictions in Florida feel like a crisis now, just wait. The federal funding that’s helping some families make rent payments to landlords will eventually dry up. The federal eviction moratorium will end. Unemployment payments will stop.
And unlike the state, local governments don’t have the financial means to take up the slack when that happens.
Thousands upon thousands of families could find themselves homeless, unprotected by Florida law and evicted from their rental spaces by landlords who, having suffered financial hardship themselves, are eager for a return to normal.
We harbor no illusions that Florida’s political leadership, after years of neglect, will suddenly give a damn about the hardship of eviction and the unfairness of Florida law for those facing eviction.
But something has to give. Florida’s political leadership cannot keep kicking the affordable housing can down the road.
Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The editorial board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Send emails to insight@orlandosentinel.com.