BURLINGTON — Last Thursday, bright red lawn signs appeared on roadsides across Burlington. “Vote no on just cause,” they read. “Protect BIPOC tenants from racist neighbors.”
By Monday, they had drawn a resounding backlash.
The signs were referring to Burlington’s “just cause” eviction ballot question, which will be decided on Town Meeting Day, March 2. If passed, the measure would strengthen eviction protections for the city’s tenants — barring “no cause” evictions, in which a landlord declines to renew a lease without giving a legal reason.
As Town Meeting Day approaches, debate about the proposal has grown heated. Proponents of the just cause policy have blasted the opposition, mostly local landlords and realtors, for misleading campaign tactics.
“This is the co-opting of racial justice language to try to convince allies to vote against [the ballot item] and continue to allow systemic discrimination,” said City Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, at a press conference Monday morning.
Local leaders joined Hightower in condemning the signs. “Using false claims of racial justice to advance private interests is wrong,” Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger wrote on Twitter. In a statement, the advocacy group the Black Perspective said the language was “based in fear and falsehood.”
The signs ignored a long history of racial discrimination in housing, critics say, which just cause protections are intended to address. Evictions are wielded disproportionately against Black tenants, according to one national study.
Others say “no cause” evictions can be used to more swiftly address tenants’ behavior that landlords or neighbors find problematic.
Under the proposed just cause policy, landlords could still evict tenants for violating their lease or the law, as well as for nonpayment of rent. Certain properties would also be exempt from the requirements — such as owner-occupied duplexes or triplexes, as well as units being taken off the rental market.
The group that distributed the lawn signs remains anonymous. But one member of the group, Elizabeth Allen-Pennebaker, publicly apologized in a letter she sent Sunday to local activists and officials.
“I misrepresented and trivialized — unforgivably — the suffering of people of color,” she wrote. “It was a toxic, dreadful mistake that I will always regret.”
Reached by phone, Allen-Pennebaker declined to provide additional details about the group. Its members were mostly white, she said: “We would never have been that stupid if we weren’t.” She, and several other members, are local landlords.
Allen-Pennebaker owns two rental properties in the city. She says she initially opposed just cause protections because she has previously used the threat of a no cause eviction to force out a tenant who had sexually harassed her. “It would have been very, very hard to take that to court,” she said of the situation.
But after the backlash, Allen-Pennebaker says she is weighing the policy differently. “It’s going to take away landlords’ ability to protect people in certain circumstances,” she said. But when compared to housing discrimination, she said, “that’s probably a tradeoff that’s worth making.”
Allen-Pennebaker’s group has not filed any campaign finance disclosures. Nor does it appear to have formal ties to the Vermont Association of Realtors — another group that has been campaigning against the policy.
Peter Tucker, the association’s advocacy director, adamantly denied any communication or relationship between his organization and the group that distributed the lawn signs. “We’re running an independent, issues mobilization campaign,” he told VTDigger.
But campaign tactics by the Vermont Association of Realtors have also come under scrutiny lately.
Recent filings with the Secretary of State’s Office revealed that a political action committee campaigning against the just cause protections — Vermonters for Housing Affordability — is funded by the Vermont Association of Realtors. “Vermonters for Housing Affordability” has mailed out several flyers opposing just cause protections to Burlington residents under this name.
The PAC’s name has caused confusion, however. It is strikingly similar to that of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition — a statewide advocacy group for tenants’ rights, which supports just cause protections.
Erhard Mahnke, a coordinator for the coalition, said he was “disturbed” by the PAC’s use of the name. He said voters had “Googled the name, and come to our coalition’s website,” leaving them uncertain of where the organization stood on the issue.
Tucker told VTDigger he had been “totally unaware” of the similarities between the two names. He also defended several of the flyers sent out by the PAC, which have drawn criticism for being misleading.
“The folks that wrote these should be ashamed of themselves,” countered Mahnke, calling the mailers “fact-free.”
The mailings described the just cause policy as “rent control” and called it “unconstitutional.”
Although the just cause proposal includes a provision that landlords cannot use “unreasonable” rent hikes as de facto evictions, just cause protections are distinct from rent control, policies that systematically regulate rent prices.
The proposed charter change specifies that any limits on rent increases should not be broadly applied. “This shall not be construed to limit rents beyond the purpose of preventing individual evictions,” it reads.
Still, because the specifics of the just cause proposal would be written as an ordinance, it remains unclear how, exactly, “unreasonable” would be defined. Tucker said he finds that problematic.
“This just cause rent control initiative severely limits the way property owners can use their property,” he said. “We see that as unfair.”
Tucker initially told VTDigger that the group also opposed the ordinance, in part because it would prevent homeowners from renting out their residence temporarily and then returning. A tenant, he claimed, “could say, ‘I’m not leaving.’ And there would be no just cause to evict him.”
This is inaccurate, however. Under the proposal, property owners would be exempted from the ordinance if they, or a family member, wanted to move into a rental unit. When VTDigger informed Tucker of this, he acknowledged the error. “No. I gotta go. I’m sorry,” he said.
The new controversies have drawn attention to the ballot question at a potentially pivotal moment, as Town Meeting Day approaches and voters drop their absentee ballots in the mail.
At Monday’s press conference, state Sen. Kesha Ram, D-Chittenden, said that before the signs had come to her attention she had not anticipated speaking out publicly in favor of the policy.
“That became impossible to do once these signs were placed around Burlington,” she said.
Because the ballot item is a proposed change to Burlington’s city charter, it must also be approved by the state Legislature before it takes effect. Ram said Monday that, if the provision did arrive at the Statehouse, it would have her backing.
“I’m looking forward to helping advance it when it comes to the Vermont Legislature,” she said.
