Voters Approve Rent Control in Florida County

By a wide margin, voters in Orange County, FL approved an ordinance that prevents owners of existing apartments from raising rents at a rate higher than the inflation rate for the region.

The vote in favor of the rent-control ordinance was 217,168 while 151,936 voted no, margin of 59% to 41%. The ballot question that was approved read as follows:

“Shall the Orange County Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which limits rent increases for certain residential rental units in multifamily structures to the average annual increase in the Consumer Price Index, and requires the County to create a process for landlords to request an exception to the limitation on the rent increase based on an opportunity to receive a fair and reasonable return on investment, be approved for a period of one year?”

Pending litigation will prevent the ordinance from going into effect. In September, a lawsuit was filed by the Florida Apartment Association and the Florida Association of Realtors, seeking to invalidate the ballot measure, but a judge ruled that the suit could not proceed until after the election.

An appeals court stayed the referendum on the rent-control ordinance, a ruling that was overturned last week by Judge Jeff Ashton, who ruled Thursday that the ordinance could stay on the ballot, but the results of the referendum will not be certified by the Orange County supervisor of elections and the county canvassing board.

After telling everyone the results would not be certified by Orange County, the county’s supervisor of elections urged voters to vote on everything on the ballot anyway.

When county officials approved the ordinance and put it on the ballot in August, they were trying to put the brakes on still red-hot rent growth in Orlando, which was far outpacing the inflation rate.

According to CoStar data, the Orlando area’s rent growth in July was 16.2%, the highest of any metro in the country; the rent growth rate for Orlando at the end of June was 18.7%.

The Orange County rent-control ordinance calls the current rental market in the Orlando Metro a “grave housing emergency.” According to the ordinance, the county has a shortage of 26,500 units and more than 80% of households who earn the county’s average median income of $80K are spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

The ordinance said the county has received more federal rental assistance than any other county in the state, noting that there have been 6,970 evictions filed in Orange County in the first half of 2022, a 70% increase from H1 2021.

At the meeting where the ordinance was adopted, county officials said that nearly half of the 230,000 existing rental units in the county could be affected if the ordinance passes—but they also conceded that the number of units affected could be less than 5,000, if rent growth decelerates in Orlando, which it now appears to be doing.

The declaration of a housing emergency by Orange County was required by state law in Florida, which has a preemptive law on the books that prevents rent control laws from taking effect unless a municipality declares an emergency.

Miami-Dade County also declared a housing emergency when it enacted a tenants bill of rights earlier this year, requiring landlords to give 60-day notice if they raise rents more than 5%.