>>This week on NewsNight, the legislature looks set to address affordable housing.

But some advocates say it amounts to a corporate giveaway.

Florida officials again cast doubt on the safety of COVID vaccinations, but many scientists are pushing back.

Plus, the death of a woman and nine year old girl, and Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons raises questions over the handling of cases by state attorney Monique Worrell.

>>NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort and welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

Well, first tonight, the shooting last week in Pine Hills that left three people dead, including a nine year old girl.

And Spectrum News 13 reporter Dylan Lyons.

Controversies now swirling over past cases involving the suspect, Keith Moses and the state attorney for Orange and Osceola Counties Monique Worrell.

We'll come to that in a moment.

But first, I spoke this week with Dylan Lyons former journalism teacher at UCF, Rick Brunson, and he told me how his students have been absorbing news of Dylan's death.

>>I just came out of a class before talking to you in this interview where one student who is already working in the news industry and she hasn't even graduated yet said something very poignant and I think compelling.

The question she's having in her head is “So the news that I work on generally doesn't hit this close to home.

” And so what she experienced this week in having to report this story out in a in a in a very tragic, traumatic story that hit close to home.

Is she emotionally equipped to do that going forward?

She's not thinking so much, will I be shot as much as how do I deal with the heaviness that I felt this week in reporting this story as a journalist?

The other questions that came out of that class is one day I aspire to be a news manager and the thought of me being a news manager who sends a reporter and a photographer out to a dangerous situation where they could potentially be harmed or injured.

That's a question I've never thought of before, and now I'm thinking about it.

So they're they're projecting questions that they may have to face in the future that before this week they had never really thought about that much.

>>Rick Brunson from UCF.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, Joe Mario Pedersen from 90.7 WMFE News, thank you so much for coming in, Joe.

Appreciate it.

And for the first time, Molly Duerig from Spectrum News 13.

Thanks so much for coming in, Molly.

>>Thanks.

>>Appreciate your time today.

Molly, let me start with you.

Obviously, UCF journalism students finding it tricky, a tricky situation to deal with.

How are you guys at Channel 13 doing a, you know, a few days after this?

And also, how is your photographer, Jesse Walton, doing?

>>Well, the good news is Jesse's recovering very, very well.

His positivity is really something that we've all admired throughout all of this.

You know, we're all hanging in there.

We're all just thinking about, obviously, Dylans family, the families of the other victims.

It's extremely heavy.

But fortunately, we've got counseling support that the company has made available to us.

I mean, I'm grateful for my own mental health treatment that I get.

And, you know, and just trying to take care of each other as best we can right now.

>>It must be incredibly difficult as a as a newsroom and as and as a journalism family.

Will Governor DeSantis and Senator Rick Scott have criticized the state attorney for the ninth Circuit, Monique Worrell for what they see as not holding the suspect, Keith Moses, to account in past cases.

Governor DeSantis has asked for documents from Worrells office.

Meanwhile, here's a statement from Senator Rick Scott: “This week, a woman, a nine year old little girl and a bright young news reporter were heinously murdered in Pine Hills by a vile criminal that never should have been on our streets.

These innocent Floridians were the victims of past justice denied and a leftist soft on crime approach that is spreading like cancer through America's criminal justice system and taking countless innocent lives along the way.

Enough is enough.

Every prosecutor that chose to give this young criminal a pass should be fired today, and state attorney Worrell must immediately account for how her office failed to protect the community from a violent criminal and outline what she's changing to ensure it doesn't happen again.

” Joe Mario, let me start with you on this one.

What do critics think the state attorney got wrong?

>>So critics are pointing to the fact that the shooter had a pretty lengthy criminal history of domestic battery, grand theft, burglary, drug possession, multiple charges in all of those, and saying pointing to that criminal history and saying that this person never, never should have been on the streets.

Now, Worrell has defended her office in saying that the majority of those charges happened while the shooter was a juvenile and that the state attorney's office does not deal with juvenile dispositions.

>>Yeah.

Molly, your colleague Curtis McCloud spoke this week with Monique Worrell.

How does she defend her actions, particularly around a 2021 case involving Keith Moses and also suspects generally who were teenagers?

>>Right.

So in that 2021 case, it was written down by the deputy responding that a gun was tossed out of the car.

The responding deputy wrote into the into his report that he planned to get DNA testing done of that gun.

Now, our reporting has shown that that actually was never done.

As far as we know, and the state attorney, Monique Worrell says that she would have prosecuted such a charge had that charge been given over to her office.

But they never received a charge from the sheriff's department.

The sheriff's department only charged for possession for drugs, paraphernalia.

And the amount of marijuana that was found is far below the 20 gram minimum that Florida Department of Law Enforcement requires to even be tested.

So it really the state attorney, Monique Worrell says that it's really not based in truth.

These allegations towards her office, they couldn't really do anything without a charge related to violence.

>>And as we saw from that statement from Senator Scott, this issue has become political.

Very quickly, let me just quickly ask you this, Molly.

I mean, Rick Brunson there talked about conversations he says newsrooms and his students are already having about the sort of difficult jobs that journalists do.

Do you think Dylan Lyons death has made journalists think more about the inherent risks in their jobs as it made you and your colleagues think more about it?

>>Yes, absolutely.

I will say I certainly am thinking a lot more about it, about how we prepare or maybe don't prepare journalists for the risks.

I mean, this was a very, very particular circumstance.

I mean, I don't think anybody thought whenever they went out there that anything would happen.

The scene was cleared.

However, yeah, it's prompting a lot of conversations.

You know, I've seen online, I know that I'm talking about it with my colleagues in my newsroom and elsewhere.

You know, what can we do to make reporters safer when we're out in the field?

>>You and your colleagues talking about it as well?

>>Very much so.

Dylan was absolutely an intern at WMFE and the tone has been pretty somber.

It's it's been pretty amazing to see the impact that a young journalist has had on so many different newsrooms throughout the area.

Just speaks to how impressive of a journalist he really was.

>>Yeah.

Very difficult time for a lot of people.

Well be sure to join the conversation on social media, were at WUCFTV on Facebook, Twitter, and also on Instagram.

Okay.

Next tonight, more on our region's affordable housing crunch.

Lawmakers in Tallahassee, long accused of not doing enough on the issue, looks set to pass a more than $700 million package of measures in the coming legislative session this month.

SB 102, known as the Live Local Act, is being championed by Senate President Kathleen Passidomo But critics fault the bill for a provision that would ban local rent controls during housing emergencies like the one passed last year in Orange County, but then blocked by the courts.

Before we get into the legislation, NewsNights Krystel Knowles has been talking to residents at the sharp end of the affordable housing crisis.

>>I would say fearful.

>>Single mother of four Charlotte Pierre represents the changing face of the affordable housing crisis.

Despite working since graduating high school, Pierre found herself without a place to call home priced out of the rental market.

>>I finished high school, but all I can get, which are like $15, maybe $16 an hour.

And even if you do overtime, you know, it's not going to show an apartment that you need or a house with your kids is going to cover two times the rent.

And so I said, okay, I'm going to work, you know, 15, 16 dollars an hour in a warehouse and then go waitress on weekends at like Waffle House.

But I can't document the cash, so I don't have any proof to show these apartments.

>>Pierce says she was unable to qualify for a designated affordable rental for a family of five, so she was forced to live in an Airbnb before moving back in with her parents.

Experts we spoke to for the story say cases like this are becoming ever more common.

They tell us working Floridians are increasingly experiencing homelessness, in part because wages are failing to keep up with the cost of finding a place to live.

Bob Kramp leads Housing for Homeless.

An organization that helps people in Brevard find accommodations, he says Charlotte Pierre was lucky to qualify for one of his group's 93 units, amid a shortfall of 350,000 affordable housing units in Brevard County.

Kramp says normally people would transition out of those units into their own places within a couple of years.

Now, many cannot afford to leave.

>>The definition of affordable, according to HUD, is if you don't pay more than 30% of your income for housing.

Under that definition, their idea of affordable housing is is fine for anybody as long as they're earning over 84,000 a year.

>>Normally, rental prices go up annually anywhere between 3 to 5%.

But according to Florida Realtors, within the past two years, rental prices went up 36%.

Brevard realtor Elyce Brown says this situation is forcing people to either get roommates, move in with relatives or risk homelessness.

She says tenants used to rent to save money for a down payment on a house.

Now, she says, high prices in the housing market, combined with rising rents, leave people with few options.

>>There are a lot of people that need to rent now that can't afford to buy a home, so the landlords feel that they can just raise rents astronomically and have no consequences.

>>Meanwhile, another demographic struggling in the current affordable housing crunch: Seniors on a fixed income.

Mary Foreman tried to move out of her sister's house but ran into roadblocks.

But after putting in the work, she qualified for a Habitat for Humanity home.

>>What I'm paying now is $1,222 a month.

So had I gone out and got an apartment, a one bedroom apartment would have cost me $1,500 dollars plus.

The prices were ridiculous.

>>NewsNights Krystel Knowles reporting there.

Molly, let me come to you on this one.

You've done a lot of reporting on the affordable housing situation.

From your reporting, how common are the stories that we saw there in Krystels piece.

>>These stories are heartbreakingly common.

I've spoken to dozens and dozens of people with very similar stories.

I remember one grandmother that we we profiled for housing special we did a couple of years ago.

She is raising two granddaughters on her own.

Elementary school and high school.

They lived in a hotel for over a year during the pandemic.

This is and I also want to point out there are resources out there to help, like the Habitat for Humanity funding, like, for example, housing choice vouchers, which are federally funded rental assistance, also known as section eight.

Well, this grandmother finally got one of those vouchers.

You have to wait often years to get one.

They're waiting and waiting.

She couldn't find anywhere that would accept one.

So even though we say, oh, housing discrimination is illegal, we know it happens all the time.

>>On a practical basis yeah.

>>A lot of folks discriminate stereotype folks with this type of assistance and say, we don't want to rent to someone like you.

Now, she finally, finally recently got into rental housing, but it took her over a year.

>>Certainly must have been a big relief.

I want to talk about the search for solutions, but first, let's hear from Catherine Steck McManus, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity, Greater Orlando and Osceola County.

>>There is a lot of discussion both at the state and the federal level of how can we bring pricing down, how can we build more homes, apartments.

And so everyone is truly coming together to make sure that no stone is unturned, that we're looking everywhere we possibly can to assure that there is equitable, fair and affordable housing in all communities.

>>Catherine Steck McManus there.

Molly, let's start with the Live Local Act.

Just outline what's in that bill that legislators are likely to take up early in the session, right?

>>Right.

So SB 102 or the Live Local Act is being described as a comprehensive workforce housing strategy statewide.

It would inject a record amount of funding into our state's Sadowski funds, which incentivize the development of new, affordable housing and provide for rental assistance in a wide variety of ways.

I would inject, I think, one and a half billion over the next ten years.

It also, interestingly, would remove some preemption.

So basically it would encourage expediting the development of new affordable housing.

Usually local governments kind of have to go through lengthy administrative processes like rezoning if they want to develop affordable housing.

Well, this would kind of be it would allow them to bypass those in certain areas under certain criteria, not in residential areas.

Interestingly, another thing that's gotten a lot of attention is it would permanently ban rent control in the state of Florida.

So that's gotten a lot of criticism.

>>And the state has been accused in the past, of course, of raiding that Sadowski Fund for other priorities.

So, Joe Mario, that brings me on to you.

Some Democrats have called this a corporate giveaway and they also object to this this this ban on local authorities imposing rent controls.

What are their main objections here?

>>So the main objection is how you define affordability.

And they're setting affordability at 120% of an area's income.

And they're saying that that's going to have varying impacts throughout the state.

What's affordable in Miami, you know, apartment one by one, apartment that's like >>2,200 a month is not affordable in other places throughout the state.

Right.

So that state precedent is what they're saying could be problematic.

>>Yeah.

Molly, as you mentioned, this bill bars local authorities from imposing those those rent controls.

Orange County voters, right.

Passed the rent stabilized ordinance that's been blocked at the courts.

In the courts.

We've talked about that a lot here on the show.

Remind us what that ordinance did and where it stands legally right now.

>>So that ordinance that Orange County voters passed by about 60% of the vote.

>>It was a big margin, right?

>>Yes.

It would have temporarily stopped rent control over a certain amount.

So it wouldn't have stopped - or, sorry, rental increases over a certain amount.

So it wouldn't have been a blanket stop on rent control.

It would have been a one year temporary restriction on raising rents above a particular amount.

So right now, it's it's been held up in the courts, as you said.

So right now, the supervisor of elections is not allowed to like certify that vote is not allowed to.

So basically can't be enforced.

>>And it was controversial even on the on the county commission.

I know the mayor was was skeptical about about whether it was the right thing to do.

Joe Mario, the existing statute in Florida says there's got to be a housing emergency.

Right.

In order to to impose rent controls.

And that's been the main sticking point for Orange County, I think, when it comes to trying to see this challenge off in the courts.

But this new legislation would ban these controls under any circumstances.

Why do the bill's supporters say that rent controls would be so damaging for the market?

>>So they're saying basically that it would deincentivize landlords and developers from doing more.

So specifically for developers.

For them, it would dissuade them from creating more in the supply.

Right.

So you would have this shortage of housing, Right.

And that would increase rent in other places.

Likewise, this could create a problem for tenants while they're trying to get appropriate housing.

So landlords might be they might raise their standards for qualifying applicants.

And this could push out individuals who come from less affluent backgrounds or they may have lower credit scores, creating this very problematic situation.

>>Well, you can find a copy of the Live Local Act on our website.

It's at wucf.org/newsnight.

You can read it for yourself there.

Well, the governor this week signed a law putting Disney's special taxing district under state control.

We also got a look at the governor's choices for who should sit on that district's board.

We'll be discussing that a lot more on next week's show when we examine the upcoming session.

But it was at the signing at a firehouse on Disney property that the governor raised once again his opposition to vaccine mandates.

He criticized the way Disney and other companies handled unvaccinated employees after the legislature banned corporations from requiring COVID shots.

>>They would treat them differently if they didn't do the shot, a shot that doesn't prevent you from getting infected or spreading it any ways.

And we knew that for sure by then.

And yet they'd make them wear masks or do this or do that.

And so one of the things we're going to be doing in the upcoming legislative session is to protect people's right to.

So we have the mandate bans all that.

We're going to make all that permanent in Florida.

We're also going to go even more in protect your civil rights to be able to participate in society without having to wear a mask or having to do some of these things.

These should be personal choices.

>>The governor's remarks follow the latest warning over mRNA vaccines from Florida's surgeon general.

In a letter to the CDC and the FDA.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo said his concerns over COVID vaccines were backed up by data submitted to the VAERS system or vaccine adverse event reporting system, which is run by the two agencies.

He wrote “academic researchers throughout our country and around the globe have seen troubling safety signals of adverse events surrounding this vaccine.

Their concerns are corroborated by the substantial increase in VAERS reports from Florida, including life threatening conditions.

We have never seen this type of response following previous mass vaccination efforts pushed by the federal government.

” But the federal government says correlation is not the same as causation.

Anyone can submit an adverse reaction report to the VAERS website.

The CDC describes the data this way: “VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event.

” It goes on, “VAERS is a national vaccine safety surveillance program that helps to detect unusual or unexpected reporting patterns of adverse events for vaccines.

” Meanwhile, as Florida officials cast a skeptical eye over the vaccine market, the latest Kaiser Family Foundation study on COVID vaccines finds public attitudes becoming more partisan >>We have been conducting the KFF COVID 19 vaccine monitor since the vaccines became publicly available, and what we have found is that Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to report that they have either already gotten the updated booster or plan to get so.

17% of Republicans say they have gotten the updated booster or plan to do so as soon as possible, compared to nearly eight in ten Democrats.

So it's a very wide margin.

>>Another issue that is very political.

Joe Mario, you cover the health beat a lot, so we'll start with you on this one.

How does the CDC explain that outsized number of advanced or adverse event reports that the surgeon general referred to in his letter?

>>Sure.

So I think first, it's important to understand what adverse event reports are and to boil that down to its most simple basic idea, it's a complaint section.

So if there are any issues at all, someone can can register for this event there.

Now, when when that happens, scientists will take a look at these events and take a look at if there is a connection to the vaccine and then, B, to make sure that the event is credible or that there's validity to it because like you said earlier, anyone can make any one of these reports about anything.

So it could be, you know, like I got the vaccine and then shortly later I had some tightening in my chest and they'll investigate to see if that was indeed true and if there was indeed a connection.

Or it could be, you know, I got the vaccine and I lost my hair afterward, and they may follow up with that to make sure.

Did that individual, in fact, lose their hair?

So, you know, they're pointing out that there was such a big amount or such a large total of adverse event reports, because this is one of the biggest, you know, rollouts of a vaccine that we've ever had.

So, of course, the total of reports was also large.

>>Certainly much larger than the H1N1 vaccine, which was the previous mass vaccination effort made by the federal government I guess.

Molly, Dr. Ladipo said he wants, quote, unbiased research done into the COVID 19 vaccine safety, but his critics say, right, that he's sort of simply amplifying, amplifying doubts over the vaccine that they say is safe.

How is the scientific community sort of, broadly speaking, been responding to this questioning of vaccines by Florida officials?

>>Well, there's been a lot of pushback from the medical scientific community on these claims.

Very interestingly, last year, Dr. Ladipo had had advised that for children, it may not be worth it to get the vaccines, that the risks may outweigh the benefits.

Now, interestingly, the Tampa Bay Times reported that at least four of the researchers that Dr. Ladipo himself cited in making that claim said, No, you are misinterpreting our research.

They use the term cherry picking of sentences to describe what he was doing, so that ultimately our research points to that the benefits far outweigh the risks of these vaccines for children.

So there has been quite a lot of pushback.

And just real quickly, with VAERS the Tampa Bay Times reports that nearly 42 million vaccine doses have been administered in Florida.

And between 2020 and 2022, the total number of events, adverse events reported of errors in Florida was 886.

So that equates to 0.08%.

So when you look at it that way and when you take into consideration that anyone, as we've said, can report to VAERS, you know, there's more to be to be looked at there.

>>Yeah, for sure.

Molly, the Florida Supreme Court, right, impaneled a grand jury at the request of the governor to look into whether there's any wrongdoing when it comes to vaccines on behalf of vaccine manufacturers, federal governments and so forth.

Has he given any indication as to what kind of misconduct he suspects?

>>Yes.

So the governor's complaints seem to largely center around - he he says that Pfizer, Moderna, these vaccine distributors and manufacturers were in it for financial gain, self-interest and were kind of falsely spreading the claim that these vaccines reduce the risk of transmission.

Now, it is important to point out that the governor himself has gone on record praising the vaccines back in July 2021, he publicly said that these vaccines are, quote, saving lives.

That's a direct quote.

He also said that over 95% of the folks being hospitalized for COVID 19 were not fully vaccinated.

So some folks have been kind of pushing back on that, too, kind of his shifting of position there.

>>The governor might might respond, well, he's just sort of following the data that he's that he's getting in Joe Mario, finally, if you can, the federal declared COVID health emergency ends in May.

Right.

What will that mean, practically speaking, for the country?

>>So practically speaking, that means the federal government is going to start paying for a lot of things.

Now, just as a reminder, like you said, it's going to end in May, May 11th.

That does not mean that the pandemic is over.

Very much we are still seeing cases of COVID 19 around the country well above what the World Health Organization would say is a safe amount or healthy amount.

Right.

But what the federal government is going to stop paying for at that point is a lot of things that we've gotten pretty used to since the pandemic started, Right.

Free tests, free masks, free vaccinations.

Hospitals will no longer be paid for the care that they provided COVID 19 patients.

Now, in Florida, probably a more direct impact that we're going to see much sooner at the end of this month is the end of the continuous enrollment provision for Medicaid.

And what that will mean is a lot of people, when the when the pandemic started, well, they lost their job and they didn't have health insurance.

So they created this provision to allow people to have health insurance during this health emergency.

Right.

Well, now, at the end of the month, we're going to see people who no longer qualify for Medicaid kicked off.

We estimate it's probably about I think it's like 1.75 million cases, which is probably over 2 million people, mostly kids.

And the big problem now, the big challenge for DCF is alerting those folks of their change in status because God forbid that one of these families ends up in an emergency room and has to deal with one of these bills, that can be really devastating.

>>Right.

We're in a different phase of the pandemic, that's for sure.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Joe Mario Pedersen covers health news for 90.7 WMFE News.

Thank you so much for coming in Joe Mario, and Molly Duerig from the Spectrum News 13.

Thanks for coming in for the first time.

Molly, wonderful to see you.

That's all the time we have.

Well see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

From all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.