TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2013 A News 6 viewer couldn\u2019t break her lease, even after showing a police report documenting the abuse she suffered at the hands of her live-in partner.<\/p>\n
Across Florida, survivors can face an impossible choice: stay somewhere dangerous or walk away and absorb significant financial penalties.<\/p>\n
Leaving with nothing<\/p>\n
A separate survivor, who News 6 is not identifying to protect her safety, said she left while pregnant. \u201cThe final straw was really when he slapped me in my face. And I said, I can\u2019t do this anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
With no money and no plan, she made the decision to go anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo money, no nothing, just hop on the bus and just pray that the bus driver didn\u2019t really ask for a ticket or anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A gap in the law<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t think about this one in particular, that if you\u2019re sharing the lease with someone who is abusing you, how do you get out of it?\u201d said Michelle Sperzel, Harbor House CEO.<\/p>\n
In June, state Senator LaVon Bracy Davis introduced a bill aimed at closing that gap. The legislation would have given survivors the right to break their lease early without financial penalty, required landlords to change the locks within a set timeframe, and hold the abuser, if also on the lease, financially responsible.<\/p>\n
The bill never got a hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a huge appetite for that this session. And it\u2019s unfortunate, there were other priorities from the committee chairs,\u201d Senator Bracy Davis said.<\/p>\n
What Florida did pass<\/p>\n
Florida did pass several protections for domestic violence survivors this session, including:<\/p>\n
Stiffer penalties for repeat abusers<\/p>\n
Shielding victims\u2019 personal information from public records<\/p>\n
Requiring nurses to be trained to recognize human trafficking<\/p>\n
But advocates say the lease bill is the missing piece.<\/p>\n
Senator vows to try again<\/p>\n
Bracy Davis said she is not giving up on the legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue working it. We may edit it, file some amendments, and then we go back to Tallahassee and we give it another try,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Breaking News Alerts<\/p>\n
Get breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2013 A News 6 viewer couldn\u2019t break her lease, even after showing a police report documenting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5713,28,30,29,70686,1335,139],"class_list":["post-315476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-domestic-violence","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-harbor-house-of-central-florida","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}