St. Petersburg City Council member Corey Givens Jr. believes strongly that tenants should have the same rights as property owners. More so, the city has a responsibility to protect residents from slumlords.
At a recent meeting, the council unanimously voted to explore the establishment of a voluntary rental registry. Givens submitted the new business item request.
The St. Petersburg government oversees a code violations database. However, the issue of neglected properties became even more evident to Givens after he had conversations with community members.
“I felt like we needed to do more,” he said. “This is giving the city a little bit of accountability, making sure that we level the playing field and provide public and fair transparent tools for city-wide rentals.”
Givens explained that the registry would include information such as property owners, rental rates and availability, among other statistics.
“Currently, we show code violations, but we aren’t showing eviction history,” he said. “So, if we were to provide that, I feel like it would prevent a lot of folks from finding themselves in situations where they end up homeless or unhoused.”
“Property owners can look up a tenant’s eviction history, but a tenant can’t look up a property owner’s eviction history,” Givens continued. “Slumlords come up with these new LLCs and they try to hide and run away from their responsibilities. This is about making sure that people are able to live in habitable units.”
Without corrective action plans in place, he explained, there is less code violation enforcement. These documents outline how a responsible party will correct an issue or multiple problems. Givens wants the registry to include corrective action plans as well.
“If you’re a tenant and your property owner has been issued a corrective action plan, you would want to know what that plan is and what the timeline is,” he said. “You should be able to get immediate notice.”
Givens hopes that a citywide rental registry will give the city “a little bit more teeth” and lead to “a conversation about increasing fines for these code violations.”
“We are connecting residents to the appropriate agencies that have the information to ensure that laws and tenant protections are followed,” he said. “At this point, what happens is sometimes we’re a day late and a dollar short with connecting these residents to programs.”
Givens explained that the St. Petersburg-based Community Law Program supports individuals who are facing eviction. According to the organization’s website, the nonprofit provides free civil legal services to financially eligible residents and qualified nonprofit organizations in Pinellas County.
“If we had some sort of a system that would notify Community Law whenever an eviction notice was served, this would help Community Law get connected with that resident,” Givens said. “This would hopefully save them time and prevent them from being homeless.”
With the approval, the new business item will be brought to the Housing, Land Use and Transportation Committee or other relevant committee.
“I’m hoping this conversation will involve into a robust discussion around slumlord enforcement,” Givens added. “Long-term, I’m hoping that this will help to reduce the number of evictions that we’re seeing across the city.”