The Burlington Charter Change Committee has approved a resolution to enact a charter change that would keep city residents from being evicted without cause.
Under Vermont’s current laws, tenants can be evicted from their rentals without reason. This resolution aims to change the city’s charter to ensure that tenants are only evicted for “just cause,” including nonpayment of rent, a breach of a lease and violation of state laws.
The resolution says “just cause” evictions may not occur when a lease ends or when landlords and tenants have a personal disagreement.
The draft charter change was passed out of the committee in a 2-1 vote. Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District voted against the measure. Shannon proposed rent increase restrictions, a definition of “just cause” and additional public comment on the charter change. Her proposal was rejected.
The meeting kicked off with two hours of public comment, focusing on the just cause eviction proposal and revisions to the citizen oversight police commission structure.
Landlords are concerned that the language isn’t specific enough and doesn’t provide exemptions for certain living situations.
Burlington resident Dan Kirk said he owns and rents out an owner-occupied unit. He said he wants the flexibility to evict a tenant to move in an ailing parent or to sell his property to pay for unexpected expenses that may arise. Those scenarios do not constitute a “just cause” eviction under the current charter change proposal, therefore the tenant could not be removed.
“To sort of consider that I might be some predacious landlord is just not the truth,” Kirk said. “I think without these exceptions, it’s too much of a broad stroke.”
Housing advocates called in to express concern that Vermont’s current laws, which allow “no cause” evictions, can lead to prejudiced actions against tenants. Christie Delphia, an administrator with the Burlington Tenants Union, said no cause evictions exacerbate homelessness in Burlington’s exceptionally tight housing market.
“No cause eviction is used to discriminate against people of color, it is used to discriminate based on sexual preference,” Delphia said. “And it is used to intimidate and threaten tenants and prevent them from reporting bad landlords.”
Shannon introduced an amendment to better define what constitutes a “just cause” eviction and to address concerns brought up by landlords that the charter change is too wide-ranging. The amendment attempted to determine that if a landlord wanted to sell the property, move in to the property or renovate the property, they could evict the tenant with cause.
“I completely agree that our focus should be on dealing with bad landlords,” Shannon said.
“But when we’re talking about forcing people to continue to rent when they don’t want to continue to rent property, that’s not a bad landlord. When we’re talking about somebody who may have some crisis in their family and a family member needs to move into one of their units, that’s not a bad landlord,” Shannon said.
The amendment also proposed rent increase restrictions to prevent de facto evictions. It would have restricted rent increases to a maximum of any tax increases, cost of living increases, plus 5% to 10% of the current rent.
But the amendment was not successful, after Councilors Perri Freeman, P-Central District, and Jane Stromberg, P-Ward 8, said they didn’t believe further clarification of the charter change language was needed at this time.
Freeman said the council will continue taking testimony on the proposed charter change and will ensure that residents have a clear understanding of what the proposal would include moving forward. Stromberg added that specific details could be figured out when the city ordinances based on the charter change are written.
But Shannon said that prior to a Town Meeting Day vote on the charter change, residents may not know the specific details laid out in the change.
“If this passes both the public and the Legislature, we will have an opportunity to work these things out in ordinance, but the public has no way to know what that’s going to be before they vote on it,” Shannon said.
The resolution has been sent to the City Council and will be discussed further in the coming weeks.
The committee also unanimously voted to send a document compiled by City Attorney Eileen Blackwood that details different police commission models across the county to the council for its consideration, following criticism that the current police commission structure doesn’t have enough power to enforce accountability.
