Shawny , I don’t disagree with you… BUT you would be totally shocked if you did some research to see how landlords have their hands tied by the government as to who we can rent to and who we can evict etc. And now Amy Foster wants the city of St Pete to force landlords to accept housing vouchers! So take a situation like mine: I mortgage my family home in order to invest in a rental property. I then make sure I get quality tenants and make sure I myself am a quality landlord so that my investment is safe and I don’t end up losing my family home. Now the city comes along and is going to force me to accept tenants who I may not deem responsible who may ruin my property and/or force me to evict them at a cost of many thousands of dollars and thereby jeopardize my investment and my family home.

There are a lot of bad landlords out there who treat their tenants inappropriately ; however in reality tenants have the lions share of legal rights protecting them and landlords have very few and those that we do have always, always means we have to spend thousands of dollars in court costs or lawyers fees to impose those rights.

Returning to Amy Foster’s plan to force good landlords to accept vouchers.... her smokescreen reason is to “eliminate slumlords”. But forcing good landlords to accept vouchers doesn’t eliminate slumlords but it possibly and probably will turn good landlords into slumlords!

On top of that of course she wants rent control as well. So I make a financial investment say in Bartlett Park and the numbers work out so I am making a profit… Which of course is the whole idea behind any job whether it be an architect a construction worker or a Landlord… But somehow the city thinks Landlords should be restricted in their profit. So as my insurance costs and especially my property taxes skyrocket as well as any repairs and installation of say an HVAC system is clearly twice the price it was five years ago, despite my costs increasing Amy Foster wants the rent to stay the same meaning my income stays the same while my expenses skyrocket. How would you like to work in the same job for, say 5 years and never get a raise...??? That’s rent control right there.

Update from the Codes Compliance Department: a case has been opened and is being investigated for this reported location. Any further updates or action will be handled by the Codes department. To track the status of this case, or to find contact information for the assigned investigator, use this link:

https://actiononline.stpete.org/Click2GovCE/casesearch.html?caseYear=19&caseNumber=21002

or call 727-893-7373 and refer to the above case number or to the property address.