New Florida Law Overrides Tampa's Tenant Protections as Rents Climb

A new Florida law is overriding local efforts in Tampa to ease pressure on renters, and city officials say it is unclear which of their protections can still be enforced.

Robin Lockett has spent years working with the group Florida Rising to make Tampa a more affordable place to live. Lockett noted that the city is often described as the best in America to live in, and that "everybody is clawing to get here." In Lockett's view, though, that appeal should not come at the expense of longtime residents. "It shouldn't be just for the new," Lockett said, adding that it is "to a detriment" that average working people cannot afford to live in the city.

A sense of progress arrived when Tampa passed a "Tenant's Bill of Rights." Lockett was measured about what it achieved, calling it "a start" and saying honestly that every step so far had been just that.

The ordinance and similar local measures have now become targets of state legislation. This summer, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1417 into law. The bill's language describes "preempting the regulation of residential tenancies and the landlord-tenant relationship to the state" and specifies that the act supersedes certain local regulations.

Councilman Luis Viera said the law erases the work he and his colleagues put into the issue. He called it "particularly destructive" because the community is living through what he described as a real affordable housing crisis. Local governments, Viera said, had certain tools they could use to respond.

Viera and every other council member voted in favor of the tenant's bill of rights. It barred landlords from discriminating against renters for reasons such as their use of government assistance. It also required landlords to tell tenants about their housing rights and about available tenant assistance resources.

What the city can continue to enforce is now uncertain. Viera said the council will ask its legal department to determine exactly what was preempted. Based on his understanding of the legislation, he said, it appears to preempt most of what the city has done. That includes rules on the notice tenants must receive about rent increases, work on eviction issues and the tenant's bill of rights itself.

Lockett remains hopeful that rent in Tampa will one day be affordable. "There's always a way to get things done for a law, right?" Lockett said. "There's a loophole somewhere."