This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
Montpelier has become the latest Vermont municipality to approve “just cause” eviction protections for renters this Town Meeting Day.
The measure passed by 16%, or about 400 votes, according to results reported Tuesday evening by City Clerk John Odum.
But the measure will need to make it past the Legislature and the governor before it can go into effect – and so far, other local “just cause” charter change votes have gotten stonewalled.
“Hopefully, this will send a strong message to lawmakers in the Statehouse that ‘just cause’ eviction is a serious policy that has a lot of support from Vermonters across the state – including outside of Chittenden County,” said Joe Moore, a Montpelier resident who helped gather signatures to get the charter change measure on Tuesday’s ballot.
The new measure clearly delineates under what circumstances a landlord can evict a tenant.
In Vermont, landlords can generally decline to renew a tenant’s lease for any reason. “Just cause” protections prohibit these evictions for “no cause” — but still allow a landlord to evict a tenant because they haven’t paid rent, or they’ve broken state landlord-tenant law or the provisions of their lease.
The language approved by Montpelier voters mirrors measures passed by Burlington and Winooski voters in recent years. It would effectively require property owners to give current tenants the right of first refusal for the unit when the lease ends. Landlords and tenants would still be able to renegotiate, but with more guardrails. For instance, a landlord would be barred from enacting “unreasonable rent increases” which can amount to “de facto evictions.”
Many small-scale landlords would be exempt altogether. Property owners who live onsite at a duplex or triplex or who rent out an accessory dwelling unit on their property could continue to evict tenants as they do today.
Given the state’s razor-thin rental vacancy rates and rising rents, proponents of such protections argue that they’re a necessary tool to give tenants greater leverage in the housing market – and insulate them from profit-driven or retaliatory evictions.
But so far, state leaders have blocked the local eviction measures passed in other cities and towns from becoming law.
Local charter changes in Vermont must get the greenlight from legislators and the governor before being enacted, and thus far, no “just cause” measure has cleared both hurdles.
Burlington residents approved a “just cause” charter change in 2021, and the next year, lawmakers gave it their rubber stamp. But Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the measure, arguing at the time that it would discourage property owners from renting out units to “vulnerable prospective tenants,” instead encouraging them to give preference to renters with better credit scores and no criminal history on their records. Rather than pass the tenant protections, Scott emphasized the need to promote more housing development. Lawmakers fell one vote short of overriding his veto.
In 2023, Burlington representatives again pushed for the charter change, and voter-approved “just cause” measures from Winooski and Essex headed to the Statehouse, too. But last year, none advanced. And this session, the prospect of passing the local charter changes appears grim.
Last month, Rep. Mike McCarthy, D-St. Albans City, who chairs the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs — which has control over whether local charter changes move forward — told VTDigger/Vermont Public that the committee would not advance the measures this year.
(McCarthy noted that the committee removed the Essex “just cause” provision — which included broader language than the Burlington, Winooski and Montpelier measures — from a larger charter change bill for the town, which has advanced).
McCarthy offered a few reasons why now is not the time to pass these “just cause” measures town by town. The bills are likely to meet yet another veto from Scott, and McCarthy does not think they would garner enough votes in both chambers for an override. He also argued that such tenant protections should be married with policies that streamline and expedite the eviction process more generally by bolstering court staffing, thus clearing the path for landlords to remove tenants who are causing safety concerns.
Instead of “just cause” protections, McCarthy wants to work on funding eviction prevention programs — and focusing on regulatory reform to bring more housing online.
“I don’t think that, in this current environment, where there are a lot of changes going on in housing, that this is the policy lever that we should push,” he said.
That hesitance under the golden dome means Montpelier’s newly approved charter change is likely to hit a major roadblock. But Moore hopes lawmakers will shift their footing after the Montpelier victory.
“We look forward to seeing the charter change move in the Legislature as soon as possible,” he said.
As local charter changes stall, some lawmakers are considering a temporary pause on “no cause” evictions statewide until July 2025.
