Speaker: Adrian Madriz
In 30 seconds or less, say your name, where in Florida you live, and how you’ve been impacted by high electricity bills.
Adrian Madriz: Hello, my name is Adrian Madriz I'm the co executive director of Smash and we have two co-ops that we operate for affordable housing in Miami. Both of them have seen incredibly high increases in the utility bills this year. Whereas last year, we were paying about $200 a month and on average now we're paying $400 a month on average for our utilities. In both of these cooperatives, these cooperatives house a collective 14 different people who desperately need affordable housing. And if the costs continue to go up like this, we're not gonna be able to afford to just cover the cost anymore, which is something that we are very delighted to be able to do. In this case, we'd have to pass on that cost to the actual folks who live here. So we asked to please do something about these utility costs because they are out of control.
What do you want to say to the utility corporations and Florida’s politicians who are responsible?
Adrian Madriz: What I'd like to say to FPL and all the other utility companies in Florida is that y'all are robbing us blind for real and you keep having us rely on these dirty fossil fuels and you never actually do anything to make the costs go down or for us to transition to a just economy. Uh, one that is based on clean renewables and we're not gonna take it anymore.
