You ready? All right. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. We're going to start this press conference. How's everyone doing today? Today is a great day. Today is a great day. Today is the day that we announce that a rental registry is going to be operational here in Duval County. Before we begin a little housekeeping, I'm going to start us off. My name is Councilmember Jimmy Pelusa from District 7. We will then pass it off to Jim Kowalski. He's the Executive Director and CEO of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid. We will then pass it off to Councilmember for District 6, Michael Boylan. And then finally, we will pass it off to Assistant Secretary and former State Senator, Jose Javier Rodriguez. This has been a long time coming, hasn't it? In the city of Jacksonville, as I was running for office, campaigning, and as I talked to neighbors and community leaders, one of the things we consistently heard from people, especially those who were renting, was, what am I supposed to do if my landlord does X, Y, or Z? What happens if there's a cave-in in my property? What happens if I need help? Who do I go to for help? And why can't the government help me more? And as a candidate at the time, I thought, these are great questions. Why couldn't we do more? Part of the answer to that is the state of Florida preempts us from doing a lot. And because the state of Florida and our friends in Tallahassee want to make sure that consumer rights and the rights of our residents aren't the same as those who are property owners, it really puts us at a disadvantage. It was scary. It was concerning. It was disappointing. There's nothing worse than being an elected official and campaigning on something and not being able to get follow-through. So as we, as policymakers, looked at different options, our friends at the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid stepped in to do something great. And let me first go back and say this. Dr. David Jaffe with the University of North Florida and Katie Renzi started basically their own landlord registry years ago with the Jacksonville Housing Project. So they started this work. But it was up to us to say, let's pick up the work they did and make sure that it's applicable for future years. And who can we have that? Who can handle that work? And again, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid said we can do that. Today, the city of Jacksonville has been working with JALA to put together a complete list of rental properties in the city of Jacksonville where you, as a tenant, as a future tenant, can look up to see on this property, are there code compliance violations? Are there evictions? We all know Jacksonville is the eviction capital of Florida. And that ain't right. And as we have constituents and residents in this city asking for more, it's up to us as policymakers to deliver. And when the city of Jacksonville can't do it because of Tallahassee, we are grateful to have leaders like Jim who are willing to step in. I'm now going to introduce Jim Kowalski. He's the head of the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Jimmy. And thank you for this opportunity to talk about our work. I want to specifically thank Council Member Peluso for his enthusiasm and support for the registry tool and for the motivation that kept the JALA team working and testing the tool to the point where we were ready for launch. Thanks specifically to JALA staff members Katie Renzi, data analyst, is too basic a title for all that she does for us, and to our former data analyst Mitchell Fairgrieve, who helped start this process, and to our entire housing team. Housing is really the highest, best use of civil legal aid. Special thanks to somebody who isn't here, former Councilman Terrence Freeman, whose leadership in forming the Critical Quality of Life Committee led directly to both our successful eviction diversion program and to the registry tool, and to Councilman Michael Bolan, who led that committee as it worked on solutions to some of Jacksonville's most pressing problems. I also want to echo Council Member Peluso in thanking Professor Jaffe and the UNF Rental Housing Program project and Florida Rising for their efforts to continue to move this project along. And that leads us to today, where we launch, discuss the launch of the rental registry to complement the eviction diversion program now in its second year. And I'm speaking to those who don't believe this city should support those types of programs. If you are a first responder with a family, or a teacher, or a health care worker, or somebody who works in the tourism and hospitality industry that drives this state, and you rent, you more than likely are worried about making that rent payment every month. More than half of our local renters are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their total income on their rent. And Florida has the most one-sided eviction laws in the entire country. You can go from an unexpected car repair bill or an unexpected hospital bill to having your stuff out on the corner in six weeks. And it is far more expensive for our community to help a homeless family get back into housing than help somebody keep their housing in the first place. And since our main focus is on workers, keeping employees housed helps our local economy as well. Now, we can't make landlords register for anything in Florida, but we can help bring some transparency to the rental process by helping you learn more about where you are renting, or in particular, or in particular, where you want to rent, especially with regard to whether your landlord ignores code violations on their property. Are we going to list those landlords who ignore their state and city obligations to maintain property? Yes, we are. And we hope the free market takes care of that from that point forward. These are good, basic programs for our families and residents to use, and they are good, basic programs no matter whose idea they are. And JALA is happy to help put them into play. And speaking of the person whose idea they were, I will turn to Councilman Michael Boylan. Thank you, Jim. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak today. You know, four years ago in September, we were steeped in the hard work of the CQLI, the Critical Quality of Life Issues Committee, focusing on access to health care, homelessness, and affordable housing. I want to recognize Dr. Jaffe as the co-chair of the affordable housing work group that we put together. You know, as I reflect upon these past four years, we've made some improvements. We have moved the needle on all these fronts. Admittedly, affordable housing is the most challenging and perhaps the hardest because of the comprehensive nature of it and the impact it has on so many people. If you take a look at the homeless situation, I think we can appreciate the fact that we've seen organizations like Ability Housing and Salzbacher and others recognizing that long-term housing and wraparound services was the solution to this process. We've done more to support those organizations, particularly who do the sheltering in our community. Access to health care. We've focused a lot on the work of We Care and Jax Care Connect, telehealth. We've seen improved opportunities as a result of all of that. Affordable housing is a little more challenging. One of the things I'm most proudest of, and Jim can certainly attest to that, is the eviction diversion program, which we established and the city supported. It's still supporting, as a matter of fact, as we move forward. There are a lot of initiatives and recommendations that came out of this particular work group that we've not moved forward all of them. But let's not discount the fact that the administration and the council has done a lot to do a couple of things as it relates to affordable housing. Number one, we've provided incentives to multifamily developers to provide below-market-rate homes with rev grants and other incentives like that. We focused, as I mentioned, on the work of the private sector with the Jax Gap Fund, what JWD and others are doing. So the point I'm trying to make is, in many respects, we as a government should let and allow the nonprofit sector, like Jala and others, and the private sector, for that matter, to take the lead in solving these problems because they impact all of this. As Jim said, it impacts what you and I as tax-paying citizens and homeowners are paying because they aren't getting the services they need and protections they need in this process. I think today is a great effort in helping protect tenants in this process, and so I'm looking forward to being here today to support it. Thank you. One thing that we should mention is the website, because I don't think anyone's said that yet. It's jackstablehousing.org. You can go in right now, search up a property, especially a rental property, and see if there have been any issues with that property. I now would like to introduce former Assistant Secretary of Labor, Jose Javier Rodriguez. Thank you, sir. Good morning, everybody. My name is Jose Javier Rodriguez. Everybody in Florida, if they're a renter, should have safe and affordable options when they're trying to figure out where they're going to live. I'm a former state senator. I'm a 20-year trial attorney. I'm traveling to state talking about how we can improve the Attorney General's Office. And I'll just share a little bit about the work that I've done that brings me here supporting this effort. As a 20-year trial attorney, I started off as a legal aid lawyer. I'm very proud of that. So I have fought for renters in the courts as well as in the legislature. And in the courts, on behalf of tenants, groups of tenants, fighting unsafe conditions, fighting unfair practices, including emergency petitions. I'm sure you all do that often on unsafe conditions issues. In the legislature, unsuccessfully fought for a tenant's bill of rights, successfully fought for protections for renters in foreclosure. And what's been described about Tallahassee is accurate. Tallahassee has not stepped up. But in Duval, the good news is that your local leaders have stepped up. So thank you, Commissioners Peluso, Johnson, Boylan, Gaffney, your administration, all your counsel here, and all the leaders that have helped make this possible. I just want to share a few words about just how significant this is. It is a simple idea, but it is a powerful one. Transparency. So before you sign a lease, you should know which landlords are violating code, which landlords aren't up to par according to the minimum standards. So that's a good thing for renters. It's also a good thing if we have an attorney general's office and if we have local enforcement that is looking for patterns, that is looking to go after repeat abuses. So this will be a powerful tool, again, if you have a partner in the attorney general's office that's going to do something about unsafe conditions and about repeat offenders, landlords that are not meeting minimum standards and repeatedly doing so. I think one of the other things, too, just to put this in context, in other states, attorneys general go even further in supporting the efforts like this in local governments by going after anti-competitive practices, by using anti-trust laws to go after rent-fixing by corporate landlords. It would be nice to have that here, not just fighting for safe housing, but really tackling some of the things, the unfair practices that are driving prices up. And I just want to end by saying, I think you'll have an acknowledgment from everybody here that good landlords have nothing to fear. The majority who are just running a business and trying to provide housing, they have nothing to fear from this transparency. It's those that are abusing renters and not meeting the minimum requirements that really have something to fear. That website, again, is jacksstablehousing.org. Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary. And just to make sure everyone knows who's up here, we have Secretary Rodriguez, we have R.L. Gundy Pastor, we have Dr. Rahman Johnson, City Council, District 14, we have Reggie Gaffney, Jr., City Council, District 8, we have Isaiah Runland with the NAACP, Jim Kowalski, and then we have, as you know, Michael Boylan, District 6. Are there any questions for what this is? Yes, ma'am. Well, for one, if they are about to rent from there, and they see that there's a code violation, now it gives them the tools they need to say, maybe I don't want to rent in this property, right? This is a way to make sure that landlords, in some way, shape, or form, especially those that have properties that are not in good condition, are kind of held accountable. And though we can't do too much because of what the state will and won't allow, at the very least, we can give people information. And with that information, we expect them to say, oh, wow, there were cockroaches here two weeks ago? You know what? I'm going to rent somewhere else. I believe we just had a story this week of a roof that fell in on a woman's apartment complex. Why on earth is that acceptable in the modern age? To me, that's horrible, and I don't know why people are almost forced to live in some of these conditions. And if we give them the tools to be able to know what they're walking into, maybe they'll realize, I don't want to walk in here and sign that contract. I'll go somewhere else. Yes, ma'am. So, if they're already running from them, we do have code compliance that people can call into. Go ahead, Jim. The other piece is Jax Legal Aid, JaxLegalAid.org, your local legal aid. So if, and it's important to walk through how this happens, because people who have a code violation, a tree falls through the roof, and they are living in that, they've got rodents, they've got roaches, whatever the issue is, clear code violation, that is separate from their agreement with their landlord. And in Florida, you can't stop paying your rent just because there's a tree in your roof. What you've got to do under Florida law is give notice to your landlord and then wait while they fix it and engage the city's code enforcement on this separate track. And Jax Legal Aid has a clinic that helps tenants give that proper seven-day notice, and then we represent them in court because the landlord can sue them for not paying the rent with the tree in the roof after the proper seven-day notice, but that's a defense under Florida law that's something lawyers can help with. Point is, we would love Tallahassee to do something to help us out a little more. Maybe getting a good AG would help with us. Go ahead, Madison, and then up to you, ma'am. No. We're not, under Florida law, we can't force landlords to opt into anything or be forced to do something. However, and Jim, if you want to come up here. Yeah, so what we've done, frankly, we can get the code enforcement records from any city through the Public Records Act. They're all public. They're just hard for normal people to get. And so what we've done is done a series of public records requests. We've got three years of Jacksonville code enforcement records already loaded into the tool, and we'll keep doing that so that we can take what is otherwise your records, the city's records that you should have as a citizen of the city, but we're making it so that you can see them. Well, actually, this city is very transparent with its public records responses. This is a good city in terms of asking those questions, too. So this is a very simple process for us. We can do it monthly. We can do it bi-monthly. We'll see how often we need to refresh, but working with the city and particularly municipal code compliance is not an issue here. So that's a great question, and I'm sorry to cut you off just a second. I'm so excited about talking about it. So there's two parts of it. One is harder to build, and one is easier to build. So the first part that we wanted to show are code violations, right? You've got this separate city track of an administrative violation that's going on. It's playing through the court system or through the civil system. And then you've got what's happening to the tenants on the ground. The other thing that is impacting this city in particular because of its overly high percentage of corporate landlords, right? We have the second highest percentage of corporate landlords in the country behind only Atlanta. And so one of the things that's happening is code enforcement wants to knock on the door of the manager to say, hey, we're about to cite you. Can we talk about it? And there's nobody in the apartment management office anymore. It's hard to find out who's actually responsible for the maintenance of your rental housing. So we're working on that. We're working with the property appraiser on downloading those records as well. And we hope to bring not only transparency to the code violations, but transparency to who actually is responsible for the day-to-day supervision and maintenance of the place you happen to be living and the entity you happen to be paying your rent to. It will stay on the website, but it will show as a close. So one of the things that we want good landlords to do, again, as Jimmy said, good landlords, I always say this about legal aid, good banks, good car dealers, good landlords, don't have anything to fear from us, from civil legal aid, from JALA. The other ones actually do, and that's part of what this is about. So if you have a landlord that's being responsive, that has a good local manager, that's turning over, there's a violation, yeah, trees fall through roofs. It happens to be raining today. So they fix it. We want that to be reflected as well. And so we'll highlight the good landlords as well as the ones that are taking a little too long. And I will say, Katie Renzi and Dr. Jaffe did the first iteration of this. They looked and found all the different corporate landlords in the city of Jacksonville in the very first iteration of this project before JALA took over. And ma'am, I believe you had a question. I didn't want to cut you off before you kind of go ahead. It's both based on what Jim just said. And you can go on there right now and you can type in the address. Yep. Yes, ma'am. Yes. So JALA, do you have that answer? Now we do have to go to... So the most important answer is not with city dollars. And I'll leave it with that. Go ahead. Real quick, real quick. Is there any sort of data percentage-wise, maybe how many rental properties you have that kind of fall under your threshold? The second part of that is, will crime data be part of how these sources of rent your bills? Not necessarily crime data in this search, as far as I know. Yeah, I hear next. But you absolutely should. I do want to quickly go towards the first part of your question, because another piece of legislation that I have been working on is a housing report, an annual housing report within the city of Jacksonville that's provided to us that shows, hey, how are different neighborhoods looking throughout the city of Jacksonville in terms of, you know, using Alice data, using corporate landlordship. We want to know if a certain neighborhood or zip code has 40 or 50 percent of the homes in that area being owned by one entity out of L.A. or something like that. So that's a piece of legislation that I'm drafting now. But we're not sure number that falls below your threshold right now. Fall below my threshold of what? I'm sorry. In other words, don't need homes in mine. Don't need, you know, requirements for... How many homes in there? Yeah, we can't give you that snapshot necessarily today. But as to your second... But that is a goal. It's a goal of all of this work is to provide interactive data for the residents of this city. But as to your second question, the JSO website is actually very good for those who do want to search crime data in their neighborhood. They have a very nice interactive map. We may link to their public site, but people can go to that site as well. That is the question, right? Right now, it's easy to find out who owns it, which LLC owns a particular complex. It is harder to find who is the property manager. There are other state partners that we work with. Schoenberg Center at UF comes to mind. So we hope to overlay long-term with that kind of data. We're not there yet in Florida. We're not there yet in Jacksonville. But again, these are long-term goals so that we provide these levels of transparency on rental housing. Right now. No, not in the database. That is a request to code enforcement. There is a process under Florida statute. When you do have to leave in an emergency basis, then there's actually a bill to abate rent. If there's a flood, if there's a fire, fires are very common in terms of residents needing to leave immediately and it not being habitable to return, like it might be after a hurricane. So, no, Florida statute already handles that. That's our job, jackslegalaid.org. It's not a function that we're trying to reach in this database. That just is something we try to make people publicly aware of through the jackslegal aid site. And it's still a part of the JALA website overall, so you've got enough JALA data right there for you. Go ahead, man. So, I mean, it is tied to code enforcement, right? I mean, there are things in Florida. In Florida, you don't have to provide air conditioning. You may agree to have air conditioning in your lease for your tenant. So, that would be something where you didn't provide air conditioning like you promised in your lease or your brochure, and there's a maintenance request. That's not something you can call code enforcement, actually, code enforcement. That's not something you can call code enforcement for because it's not a code violation. I don't know. Tallahassee. Because then we could do about, right, that's a state thing. Yeah, that's a state thing. We could do about that. We need to talk to the legislature. Right. Right. Well, hopefully he will if things go like we want it November 3rd. Do you want to speak to that? Yeah, I mean. We're not campaigning, but if things go like we want it, we will. Listen, there is a lot that can be done for renters. We do need major changes in Tallahassee, not just with the corruption, but with a lot of the laws. As you heard, Florida has the worst laws in the country when it comes to protecting renters. And I'll tell you, a lot of times, I mean, you can ask anybody here who's moving to Jacksonville. And they're signing a lease, and they may be asking questions, and the landlord is just looking at them and just kind of laughing, like, why are you asking that? We don't offer that here. So the legislature does need to step up. And the easiest thing to do, pull back preemption. Let leaders that are ready to lead and serve their communities step up if you are not willing to do so. Yeah. I think James Batcheson. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll let you all answer that. So if the housing authority has a violation? Yeah, so if it's a code violation, yes. Now, whether MCCD, Municipal Code Enforcement Division, does code enforcement on JHA properties, that's a separate question that we're not going to answer today. But, yes, if it's code enforcement, we're going to track it. So two things. The Princeton Eviction Lab tracks Jacksonville as one of the cities that gets data from the clerk's office. So there's pretty real-time eviction filing data, court data, on the Princeton Eviction Lab website. But as I mentioned before, this disconnect, and the gentleman had the same question, the disconnect between who manages your property and who owns your property, that is a non-transparent thing in this state. It's a non-transparent thing in this city. So as Katie works on building this out, as the UNF rental lab works out on this issue, we hope to add that level of transparency because it doesn't just help us, it helps the code enforcement officers. We have a great code enforcement unit in this division. They're out every day, they're in the hot sun, in the rain, they're going into apartments trying to figure out whether there's violations and trying to help the residents of the city, and they can't get to the manager who's in charge. So is that solvable on September 18, 2026? No. Is it need to be solvable in this state, in this city? Yes. Do we hope to get closer with this tool and with these types of tools? Absolutely. Go ahead, David. Well, of course. I mean, so the question is, if a landlord says, I've got a substandard property and I need to come off this list. This is what happens with subsidized housing, right? There's an incentive to take the subsidized rent and not put it back into the complex. That's always going to be true. But in the same way that there are good banks and bad banks, the first step is to describe who's who and why, right? You can make money as a landlord in Florida. There are landlord sites that advertise this is the best place to make money, actually, in the country as a landlord. There's a reason why it's seen as so attractive for landlords. It's so one-sided right now. If it gets a little more on the other side because of these transparency tools, the market will correct itself. Do you have any more questions? Thank you all so much for being here. Thanks for braving the rain. We really appreciate it. This is a great day. Jackstablehousing.org. Go check out the website. Thank you, guys.