Orange County voters will get to decide a rent-cap ordinance that may not survive future court challenges, a judge ruled.
“There is public good in the democratic process and in allowing the public to exercise their right to express their opinion on this issue, even if that is all it will ever be, an opinion,” Circuit Judge Jeff Ashton said Thursday in a nine-page order rejecting a landlord group’s request to take the measure off the Nov. 8 ballot.
The judge said he thought the ordinance crafted by Orange County commissioners was “contrary to established law,” an opinion the board had heard from other experts, including a consultant they paid $60,000 while studying the controversial proposal.
“The Court should not substitute its judgment of public interest for the people’s elected representatives,” Ashton added. “The public interest is rarely served by removing a contentious issue from public debate.”
The Florida Apartment Association, which claims its members own 80% of rental housing in Orange County, and the Florida Realtors sued last month seeking an injunction against the rent stabilization ordinance that would impose a one-year cap on rent increases.
The groups asked the judge to declare the ballot issue invalid or block its enforcement if the measure passes.
Orange County commissioners voted 4-3 on Aug. 17 to put the rent-cap issue on the Nov. 8 general election ballot as a referendum for voter approval, a requirement of a state law adopted in 1977 by the Legislature to discourage government interference in rental markets.
Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles said the ballots including the rent-cap referendum “are at the printers and have been given the go for printing.” He said his office will send out military and overseas vote-by-mail ballots Sept. 21.
Chip Tatum of the Florida Apartment Association said the group will keep fighting the measure.
“We are disappointed by the decision of the court today to allow this measure to be voted on in November, but feel optimistic that ultimately this fundamentally flawed rent control measure will be overturned,” Tatum said in an email that referred to the judge’s doubts of the ordinance’s legal grounds. “It is for this reason, among many others, that we will continue to vigorously defend the rights of our members and all property owners in Orange County.”
If voters approve the rent stabilization measure, the ordinance would impose a one-year cap of rent hikes for potentially 104,000 apartments in Orange County at 9.8%, a percentage equal to the increase of the Consumer Price Index for urban consumers in the South.
Ashton’s order included a historical overview of rent control starting in New York City in the 1920s and enumerated reasons Orange County commissioners cited to justify the proposed ceiling on rent hikes.
In his order, Ashton also said the commissioners’ proposed rent-cap measure “is not the first such example of this seemingly odd choice by a legislative body.” A footnote in his ruling referenced the Florida Legislature’s so-called Docs vs. Glocks law in 2011.
The statute, backed by the National Rifle Association, tried to stop doctors from asking patients about their guns. A federal judge banned the law from going into effect, ruling the restrictions were a violation of health providers’ First Amendment rights.
Ashton noted 80% of county residents are considered “cost-burdened” as they spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
The judge also cited increasing eviction filings — over 1,700 in August alone, the most in a month in at least a decade — and overwhelming demand for rental assistance since 2020, leading to government payments of about $252 million to landlords of local rental properties.
While alarming, Ashton said, those facts may not be sufficient to meet the standard required by the 45-year-old Florida law.
“Most importantly there were no findings that rent increases have led to ‘two or more families being obliged to occupy an apartment adequate only for one family, with a consequent overcrowding, which was resulting in unsanitary conditions, disease, immorality, discomfort, and widespread social discontent,'” he wrote, citing conditions that prompted rent controls in New York in 1920.
The Florida statute mandates that, before rent restrictions can be imposed, a local government must determine that price controls are “necessary and proper to eliminate an existing housing emergency so grave as to constitute a serious menace to the general public.”
Such a menace has not yet arrived, the judge wrote.
He said while the county may fear tenants will be exploited by “profiteering” landlords, the board made no finding it was occurring.
“It is laudable, indeed, that those who put forth this proposal do so to avoid the very kind of social upheaval that comes from the circumstance found in the tenements of New York a hundred years ago,” Ashton wrote.
Commissioner Emily Bonilla, who proposed the measure, said the judge’s decision may encourage other Florida cities to take similar actions.
“They have now an opinion from a court to move forward on their own rent stabilization with more confidence,” she said.
Bonilla said rent has nearly doubled for some households in the last year, “which basically puts them in a position where they’re homeless.”
shudak@orlandosentinel.com