Paul Renner Appropriates ‘Affordability’ as His Laggard Campaign Tours Florida

Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Paul Renner took his “Affordability Now” tour to Tampa Bay Thursday, where the conversation focused on property insurance rates, property taxes, and growing discontent with condominium and homeowners’ associations (HOAs).

Florida voters have made clear over the past year that affordability is their top concern. In a University of North Florida survey last month, 50% of respondents said it is their top concern, with the next highest issue being political polarization at 12%.

Struggling in the polls, the former speaker of the Florida House held an exchange about the cost of living in Florida with about a dozen employees at Friends Plumbing, a small business in northeastern Pinellas County. The biggest complaints were high fees, restrictive rules, and authoritarian structures within HOAs and condo associations.

“I understand wanting to keep the neighborhood neat, nice, and clean,” said an unidentified Friends Plumbing staffer. “I do want that as a person who bought a home and I want my neighbor’s home to look good just like mine, but where do we draw the line about what they can tell you to do and not to do and how much they charge you?”

Monty Kosloski, owner of Friends Plumbing, said he considered purchasing a beachfront property in Pinellas County, but that the HOA fees were “out of control.”

“A thousand dollars, $1,200 for an HOA for an eight-story building? That’s a lot of revenue that they’re bringing in. Where the hell is all of that going? The whole thing is concrete. There’s no grass to cut,” he said. “The HOAs in this area are a real problem.”

An unidentified woman complained “the lobbyists are lining the pockets of our politicians and nothing’s getting done to actually get relief for the homeowners and to create more affordability when it comes to these HOAs and condo associations.”

Lawmakers in Tallahassee did attempt to do something about those problems during the regular legislative session.

A proposal designed to reform HOAs (HB 657) passed nearly unanimously in the Florida House last month, 108-2. However, its Senate companion (SB 1498) advanced only in one of its three assigned committees, effectively killing the bill by the time the session ended on March 13.

Among its provisions was creating a process for homeowners to dissolve an association and allow state circuit courts to set up “community association court programs” to settle disputes.

Renner said it’s a complaint he’s heard countless times since he began his campaign for governor last fall.

He also heard concerns on Thursday about Florida’s property insurance market. Republicans in the Capitol have maintained that the crisis has abated in the past year, touting reforms they contend have eased the way for 17 new insurance companies to enter the state. They also say dozens of homeowners and auto insurers have filed for rate decreases.

Renner himself has touted some of those statistics, but he acknowleged more needs to be done.

“I think that our reforms are absolutely working, but it was going up so fast and now it’s leveling off and some people are seeing reductions,” he told the Phoenix following the meeting. “We have competition, we’re moving in the right direction, we’ve gotta protect the reforms we’ve got, but there’s more that we can do regulatory and more home hardening with the My Florida Safe Home [program] and things of that nature.”

Renner said he’s working on a major property tax reform package that he’ll unveil in the next few weeks. In November, he called for the Legislature to reduce ad valorem taxes levied by local governments to the previous year’s levels, as well as a reduction based on how each county’s spending had increased since 2020.

That proposal came as Gov. Ron DeSantis had been campaigning for months on allowing voters to decide whether to reduce or even eliminate non-school property taxes on homesteaded properties this November. Despite the buildup, however, the Florida Senate, seemingly taking their cues from DeSantis, declined to offer any type of property tax plan during the regular session, ignoring a Houses joint resolution to end all such taxes.

DeSantis didn’t like that plan and intends to call a special session on the topic.

“There is no proposal on the ballot right now for 2026, so what I’m proposing would be as governor going forward if they don’t get anything done this year — and it’s not looking good right now,” he said at one point during the nearly 45-minute discussion.

Renner blasted state government leaders during the last week of the regular session last month, saying the cost of living was “crushing” Florida families yet “Tallahassee has just ignored” the problem. He doubled down on that criticism Thursday.

“I say this as a Republican. They’ve totally failed and missed the No. 1 issue that people are facing, which is the cost of living,” he said. “And your job when you’re in the majority is to solve people’s problems. And so, we’ll do that, and I’ve gotten after these issues and I’m going to get after them and do more when I’m governor.”

Renner later held a second stop in Tampa. He is scheduled to make four more appearances on his tour next week.

Renner, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, and investment firm CEO James Fishback are trailing significantly behind U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples in the Aug. 18 Republican primary for governor. An Emerson College survey of 465 likely Florida Republican voters published last week showed Donalds with 46% support, with the other three nominees in the low single-digits.

–Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix