Jacksonville Tenants' Union, Inc.

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Jacksonville Tenants' Union, Inc.

Who Is JTU?

Jacksonville Tenants' Union is an grassroots community organization that was founded by tenants of a HUD housing complex in Jacksonville, following the severe beating and abduction of a disabled woman from their building.

This issue was compounded by a vulgar and incompetant property manager that sent a letter to all the disabled and elderly tenants, telling them, ''If you dont like it - MOVE!''

Shortly thereafter, JTU was formed and took action to ''evict'' both the property manager and the management company, and reclaim their right to competant management, and restore a safe environment.

A Right to Effective Security?

Security is always an issue in apartment communities. In Jacksonville, there are 16,000 renters in apartments, where 42% of violent crime occurs. A large portion of these rental units are regulated by HUD.

Currently, the is no HUD requirement for ''digital imaging'' (security cameras) in multi-family HUD housing. This type of security is no longer ''high-tech'' or expensive. Take a look around you, and think of all the places where digital imaging is taking place in your daily routine: grocery stores, ATM, state highways, retail businesses, cell phones, web cams, parking lots, offices, interstate highways, gas stations, just to name a few. Yet this readily accessable and inexpensive technology is not required by HUD in buildings that house many (even hundreds) of people, many of whom are disabled or elderly.

What Can I DO?

The best thing anyone can do is: DO NOT become disabled, elderly, or impoverished.

The next best thing would be to start a JTU ''Resident Council'' in your HUD complex. You can e-mail us for more information, see our Homepage, and then decide how empowered you would like to be.

If you cant do that, contact you City Council Representative, to encourage the Jacksonville Journey to continue their efforts like -

''CRIME-FREE MULTI HOUSING''

This is a great program that I encourage everyone to know more about, whether you are a landlord or a tenant. This program is sweeping the country with amazing results. It is popular with landlords, tenants, police, and neighborhood communities. Although not very popular with felons, child molesters, prostitutes, theives, and other undesirable tenants.