[A coalition of churches has achieved some successes in resisting
and mitigating against rent gouging and displacement after Hurricane
Ian. ]
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PUSHING BACK AGAINST DISASTER CAPITALISM IN FLORIDA  
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Elena Novak
October 19, 2023
Yes Magazine
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_ A coalition of churches has achieved some successes in resisting
and mitigating against rent gouging and displacement after Hurricane
Ian. _

,

 

urricane Ian blew through Southwest Florida as a Category 4 hurricane
in September 2022, inflicting more than $112 billion in damages.
A National Hurricane Center report
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costliest hurricane in Florida’s history, and the third-costliest
ever in the United States.

Many in the hardest-hit region of Lee County continue to bear that
cost, not just from the physical damage, but at the hands of property
owners and developers.

One of those affected is Lorna Washington, a former Fort Myers
resident who lived in her 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom rental for two years
before she was forced to leave.

“After the storm, since there wasn’t any damage to the property,
the owner decided he was going to put it up for sale because of the
shortage of housing units from the storm,” she says. “He listed it
at a very high price, feeling that people would be desperate and pay
that price.”

The house, which she lived in with her two children and two
grandchildren and was renting for $2,200, was purchased in 2014 for
only $187,000. When it was put on the market in 2023, the asking price
was $550,000, despite the fact that no repairs or upgrades had been
made in years. The owner, Washington says, lived in New Jersey.

“First he told us we could stay until he sold it, then he changed
his mind and told us we had to leave in four days,” she says.
“That was the first time in my entire life that I had ever been
without a place to stay, and I didn’t know where I was going to lay
my head—not just me, but my family, my kids, and my grandkids.”

Rental rates were already on the rise before the storm, she says.
According to a 2022 Shimberg Center for Housing Studies report, 28%
of Lee County renters are low-income or paying at least 40% of their
income on rent
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that is the pandemic bump: From July 2020 to July 2022, 221,000
residents moved to Florida from other states
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the largest gain of residents from within the U.S. since 2005. For
many, arriving from notoriously expensive states like California or
New York, more affordable homes were the driving factor.

“When they came here and saw these lower prices, they gobbled up the
real estate and drove the prices up,” Washington says. “To them
it’s a bargain, but to locals, we were priced out of the market. We
were not accustomed to these prices.”

After the storm, rental rates skyrocketed even further. Though she had
been approved for a smaller 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom rental, the landlord
wanted $2,700 a month. Just two years prior, a similar property she
rented cost only $1,300. After spending a week living between a hotel
and an Airbnb, Washington finally found a rental home for $1,800 in
Cape Coral.

Hers is one of many stories of how development is reshaping the Lee
County landscape. My own parents, whose home in Cape Coral was flooded
by record storm surge during the storm, were forced to relocate to St.
Petersburg while they cleaned out their house and eventually put it on
the market as-is. It sold to buyers from Miami whose primary residence
is a 5-bedroom, 4-bathroom house worth over $1 million. Because of
high interest rates, most buyers fit this profile: investors looking
to flip for a profit
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For coastal areas that were totally wiped out, like Fort Myers Beach,
developers are seizing the opportunity to drive up prices even
further
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Most of the post-Ian properties will cost $1 million or more,
according to sources quoted by _Business Observer_; meanwhile, fewer
than a third of the low- or middle-income residents who used to live
there have been able to return.

If this sounds familiar, it is. After the fires in Maui that
destroyed nearly 1,900 homes
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developers started reaching out to residents and offering to buy their
land, hoping they’d be desperate enough to sell after the long wait
for government assistance and insurance payouts. According to
residents interviewed by _USA Today_, many are holding their ground,
resisting contributing to the affordable housing crisis the island had
already been facing due to a rise in short-term rentals and vacation
homes.

In Lee County, faced with similar pressure, locals are finding ways to
fight back. Washington is a member of Mt. Hermon Church in Fort Myers,
one of the founding members of Lee Interfaith for Empowerment (LIFE),
an organization made up of 14 congregations across the county who hold
public officials accountable for creating policies that address the
community’s needs. For three years, LIFE fought to get the city of
Fort Myers, where most of their members are located, to implement an
affordable housing trust fund
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In January of 2022, they finally won.

Though it took many subsequent months of follow-up to see movement
with the trust fund, that accountability is starting to pay off. As of
August 1, the fund had a balance of just over $3.7 million. About
$520,000 of the total has been spent on developments, including units
set aside for low- to moderate-income families. And, as of February
2023, $400,000 of the affordable housing trust fund is being set aside
for a rental assistance program
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“Prior to the storm we had some pushback, and then after the
hurricane we had less pushback because now the homelessness and the
housing shortage is staring everybody in the face,” Washington says.

Families or individuals who apply can receive up to $600 in monthly
assistance, depending on where their income falls, with the property
owner or manager receiving a subsidy as incentive to participate in
the program. But Washington feels it’s not enough.

While operating her cleaning and repair business that services rental
properties, she’s heard a lot of stories of people who received the
rental vouchers, but found that there were no rentals available or
that landlords—knowing they could still ask for above-market
rents—weren’t accepting the vouchers. Further, the requirements to
rent even with a voucher are steep; would-be renters still need to
make three times the rent and pay three-months’ rent up front—an
often impossible ask for people needing assistance with rent to begin
with.

“What we have been pushing for the city to do is to get the land and
the developers to actually build those types of units, and that will
alleviate some of the issues—to build more units that will take
these types of renters,” Washington says.

In September 2023 LIFE showed up to a Fort Myers city council meeting
to make their voice heard in a debate over the fate of a building that
once housed the _News-Press_ newspaper. Rather than sell the
building to developers hoping to use the property to build luxury
condos, the city chose Miami-based company Tre Bel Housing
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whose proposal promised rent-restricted housing for essential workers.

Over 40 members from LIFE showed up to that meeting, with several
speaking publicly to remind the council of the housing crisis.
Councilwoman Teresa Watkins Brown, when declaring that she was going
to vote for the affordable housing, said, “I’m listening to my
community.”

Other organizations are taking matters into their own hands, rather
than waiting on the government to do it. The Immokalee Fair Housing
Alliance [[link removed]] (IFHA) was formed
to address the housing needs of farmworkers in Immokalee, an
agricultural community in neighboring Collier County. The alliance is
building 128 hurricane-resistant affordable rental units for
farmworkers and low-income families, many of whom currently pay up to
70% of their income to live in 50-year-old trailers with limited
access to toilets and infested with mice and mold. After Hurricane
Irma in 2017, many of those trailers became uninhabitable due to
severe wind damage.

According to Carleton Cleveland, board member of the IFHA, the groups
who came together to form the coalition after Irma did so in order to
create something longer lasting than disaster relief could provide. In
addition to the rental units, IFHA is building a community center,
athletic fields, and a community garden.

“For the most vulnerable communities, like ours here in Immokalee,
we have to look for solutions together to protect against the effects
of climate change,” says Lupe Gonzalo, a former farmworker and
current staff member for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a
member organization of the IFHA.

After Hurricane Ian, because the Immokalee community wasn’t as
hard-hit as nearby Lee County, the CIW stepped in and became a
resource distribution hub, also using their radio station to provide
information to the community both during and after the hurricane.

“We have a history of organizing not only with workers but also with
consumers and the public,” Gonzalo says. “We’ve created a really
good connection to the community and a sense of trust in the
community, and that’s what gives us the confidence to communicate
with the community in times of crisis.”

The CIW has been organizing Immokalee workers for 30 years, winning
protections like mandatory heat breaks to keep workers safe when doing
outdoor work.

Housing security is another protection that can keep communities safe
during a crisis. For some coastal communities, that might
mean seeking government grants to relocate away from the coast
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For others, it might mean giving the locals a fighting chance against
developers seeking to profit off of devastating loss, like
the moratorium on sales of damaged property
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by the governor of Hawai‘i. Whatever this aid looks like, the
problem is too big for one community to solve on its own.

“Humanity has borrowed a large debt from nature for decades of
unsustainable exploitation, and the time to pay has come,” Gonzalo
says. “At this point, we can’t let communities solve their
problems alone, because climate change isn’t only affecting
communities like ours, it’s a global problem. It’s a problem that
governments should be responding to.”

_Elena Novak is a nonbinary organizer and writer from Florida. Their
articles have been published on the Huffpost blog, Everyday Feminism,
and in newspapers in Florida and North Carolina. After furthering
their political education at Clark University in Worcester, they began
a three-year stint as an organizer helping lead behavioral health and
environmental campaigns in Pinellas County, Florida. In their free
time, they love hoarding books from the library and cuddling their
cat, Luna. They are a member of the National Writers Union. You can
reach them at [email protected]_

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* Florida
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* Climate Change
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* Housing
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