A single topic dominated the public comment portion of the Jacksonville City Council’s meeting Tuesday night: housing. More specifically, residents say a city-wide housing crisis is making it harder and harder for them to make ends meet. 

This problem is not new despite receiving more media attention in recent months; it has “escalated to a large extent since the pandemic,” University of North Florida (UNF) sociology professor Dr. David Jaffee said. “I don’t think it’s going to be stuffed under the rug anymore. I think there’s going to be more and more attention to it.”

With a team of nine UNF students, Dr. Jaffee has been collecting and analyzing data on the state of the rental housing market in Jacksonville since the start of the summer. He and his team conduct interviews, research and advocate for housing policies successfully implemented in other communities, a project that Dr. Jaffee says has no end date. 

“And we’re looking at all aspects of the rental housing situation, rental housing market, who controls it, where evictions are taking place, we’re doing zip code level analysis,” Dr. Jaffee said. “This will be an ongoing project.”

A large percentage of Jacksonville renters are cost-burdened or rent-burdened, according to Dr. Jaffee. 

The Federal Reserve defines rent burdened as “spending more than 30 percent of income on housing and ‘severely rent burdened’ as more than 50 percent.” 

Dr. Jaffee claims that a further 25% of Jacksonville renters fall under this severe rent-burdened category. 

“Everyone we’ve interviewed has, has talked about the physical condition of the property, of the problem of moisture, the problem of mold, the problem of rodents,” Dr. Jaffee said. “And there really is no, virtually no, accountability.”

A push for ‘The People’s Budget’

Residents have been calling on the Jacksonville City Council first to acknowledge that there is a problem by declaring a housing crisis.

Members of three local activist groups — the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC), Florida Rising and Florida For All — spoke during public comment and protested on the front steps of City Hall on Tuesday.

JCAC is a black-led group of activists pushing for “community control of the police,” among numerous other city-wide issues, affordable housing being one of them. The group has drafted a “People’s Budget” that outlines how they believe the city council should allocate Jacksonville’s budget differently. 

This year, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office budget totals $502 million. During his budget proposal presentation in July, Mayor Lenny Curry proposed a budget that — if approved — would be $540 million, according to News4Jax.

The city has an overall $1.5 billion budget and currently, 33% of it is allocated to JSO. Next year, it would be upped to 36% if Mayor Curry’s budget proposal is approved. 

Activist groups argue that this additional money would be better spent on community services and other ways to “invest in the people of Jacksonville,” according to JCAC’s website. 

“The People’s Budget allocates a generous 25% of the city’s budget to JSO, and it reallocates the remaining funds in a way that invests in the people of Jacksonville,” their website reads. 

The 13-page document outlines JSO’s current budget and performance breakdowns and sections dedicated to the housing issue in Jacksonville. 

One solution they’re proposing, which Dr. Jaffee also discussed, is the establishment of a Tenants Bill of Rights. 

“The Tenants Bill of Rights would essentially layout to a large extent the existing rights and protections that tenants have, but of which they are largely ignorant,” Dr. Jaffee explained. “Not only would it have the rights that they have as a tenant, but it would also typically include a list of resources they could access in the event that they had issues with the landlord, eviction problems, etc.”

JCAC also advocates for the creation of an Office of Tenant Advocacy. Read the full “People’s Budget” here. 

Is progress feasible? 

“I think it’s going to be very difficult to get the city council to do much of anything significant with regard to affordable housing,” Dr. Jaffee said, arguing that Jacksonville is a conservative city with a largely Republican-dominated city council. 

However, he believes that a Tenants Bill of Rights could be passed “probably immediately” because it simply informs tenants of existing rights. 

“This is not a huge, radical proposal,” he said, “but nonetheless, it’s progress.”

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