Page 7 - Florida Sentinel 10-1-21

Every Tampa Resident Deserves Safe Housing
cused on how the police depart- ment shares with landlords pub- licly available police reports involving their tenants, which can lead to evictions.
Keep in mind that the TPD is not evicting anyone. It is merely providing public records to land- lords like the Tampa Housing Authority, who must provide due process through the court system to any tenant it seeks to evict.
Crime-Free has delivered pos- itive results, but we are always evaluating and improving pro- grams like this. Since I became mayor in 2019, the Tampa Housing Authority and Tampa Police Department went through additional training, and we made several adjustments barely mentioned by the news- paper:
*Revised forms and materials to underscore that it was a vol- untary, opt-in program.
*Discontinued distribution of a lease addendum that implied the police department was in- volved in eviction decisions.
*Stopped requiring use of the lease addendum to be certified as crime free.
*Discontinued the use of G.O.A.L. – General Offender Awareness List. This informa- tion is no longer assembled and
shared with landlords.
Last week (Sept. 17th), in col-
laboration with City Council Chairman Orlando Gudes and State Rep. Dianne Hart, we made several other changes to alleviate concerns prompted by the Times article, including specifying the crimes (no misde- meanors) that are to be reported to property manager; requiring a captain sign off on all notices to property managers; and re- quiring that notices be sent only when a crime occurs on the property of the complex partici- pating in the program.
Ensuring access to affordable housing is a top priority for my administration. We want no one to be evicted unfairly, but we also can’t forget the overwhelm- ing majority of law-abiding citi- zens living in these apartments.
A 2019 review demonstrated a 34 percent reduction in drug offenses and a 37 percent reduc- tion in serious crimes at multi- family properties that opted into the voluntary program.
The newspaper highlighted a few eviction examples in their story. One was a woman with a history of violence, including an arrest for child abuse. Another family was evicted after a mother’s children had multiple run-ins with the law. My heart
goes out to a mother like that – but no more so than her many neighbors who don’t want to live beside criminals.
It’s important, of course, to help troubled families too, and the Tampa Police Department also makes positive collabora- tion with the youth in our com- munity a high priority. Initiatives such as the Resources in Community Hope (R.I.C.H.) House afterschool program, Big Brothers Big Sisters Bigs in Blue Teen Academy, and Tampa Parks & Recreation Stay & Play are just a few ways officers are working to foster positive rela- tionships with our young resi- dents.
We’ve already heard the sug- gestion that Crime-Free should be put on hold. To do so would only hurt our most vulnerable residents. With the violent crime rate rising, this is not the time to cut back on law enforcement’s collaboration with the commu- nity to keep Tampa safe.
Mistakes surely have been made over the past decade, and we are always evaluating and improving programs like this. But the bottom line is that the vast majority of hard-working residents, the silent overwhelm- ing majority, want and deserve a safe home and neighborhood.
Tampa is one of the safest communities in America, but this has been a rough year for crime here and in cities across the country, including a 28 per- cent rise in gun violence so far this year. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Suni Bell, a beautiful 4-year-old girl murdered in a drive-by shooting last month and how someone in our community knows who killed her and needs to come for- ward.
You don’t have to be a former police chief like me to under- stand that there is no more im- portant job for government than keeping people safe. That’s why I think it is so important for peo- ple to understand what the Tampa Police Department is doing – and not doing – with its
Crime Free Multi-Housing Pro- gram that was the focus of a re- cent Tampa Bay Times article.
This voluntary, citywide pro- gram is a partnership between the community, landlords, and the police department, with the goal of making apartment com- plexes that choose to participate safe for everyone.
As a cop, I worked neighbor- hoods where residents slept in bathtubs to avoid gunfire, and I know the program has made a big difference for thousands of tenants.
Participation in the crime pre- vention program includes an ed- ucational component and crime prevention requirements, in- cluding proper lighting, land- scaping, and other safety measures. The newspaper fo-
FRIDAY, OCTOBER1, 2021 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY PAGE 7-A