TAMPA, Fla. — For years, Robin Lockett has fought alongside Florida Rising to make Tampa an affordable place to live.
"With Tampa being, as many have stated, the best city in America to live in, everybody is clawing to get here. I think that it shouldn't be just for the new. It needs to be affordable for the people that have been here," she said. "It's to a detriment that, you know, average working people can't afford to live here."
Lockett saw a glimmer of hope when the city passed a "Tenant's Bill of Rights."
"It was a start, and that's me being honest, everything was a start," Lockett said.
However, it and similar measures became targets under new state legislation.
This summer, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1417 into law.
The bill reads, "preempting the regulation of residential tenancies and the landlord-tenant relationship to the state; specifying that the act supersedes certain local regulations."
Councilman Luis Viera feels this erases his and his fellow councilmembers' work.
"That's particularly destructive because we're living in a time where we really, really have an affordable housing crisis. Local governments have had certain things that we could do as a local government," he said.
Councilmember Luis Viera and every other councilmember voted in favor of the tenant's bill of rights. It barred landlords from being able to discriminate against renters for reasons such as government assistance. It also required the landlords to inform tenants about all housing rights and tenant assistance resources.
Now the future of what can and can't be enforced is up in the air.
"What we have to do is inquire with our legal department to see what exactly was preempted. From my understanding of the legislation, it appears to preempt most of what we've done. We've done things involving notice given to tenants for things like rent increases, looking at eviction issues, that tenants bill of rights," he said.
Lockett has faith that one day rent will be affordable in the city.
"There's always a way to get things done for a law, right? There's a loophole somewhere," she said.
