This commentary is by Tom Dalton of Essex Junction, executive director of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. He is a lawyer and a licensed alcohol and drug counselor.
Housing security has been a big topic in the Legislature thanks to sharp increases in homelessness. But even as lawmakers work to enhance housing protections for most Vermonters, they are considering a bill that would strip away standard tenant protections from those who pay rent to live in a sober house.
It’s a dangerous and unnecessary step that legislators should not take.
The removal of standard tenant protections from this particularly vulnerable group of tenants has been highly controversial. Bills creating an exemption failed to pass out of committee repeatedly in recent years. Past media coverage has highlighted the harms to tenants who are forced to leave recovery residences with no safe place to go.
A letter to legislators opposing the removal of standard tenant protections for recovery residence tenants was signed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, ACLU of Vermont, Vermont Interfaith Action, Women’s Justice and Freedom Initiative, Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform and family members who have lost loved ones to overdose.
Safe and stable housing is foundational to achieving recovery for people living with substance use disorders. When groups of people in early recovery live together, it creates a high-risk environment. In most recovery residences, every tenant is at risk for relapse.
Unless we make sure all tenants are provided with continuous shelter and support — even when they struggle — no tenant is safe.
People who live in recovery residences are currently fully covered by standard tenant protections under Vermont law. In 2020, Vermont Legal Aid sent a letter to every recovery residence operator reminding them of their legal obligations.
These standard tenant protections are valuable, protective and not easily replaced. They recognize what is often a significant power differential between landlords and tenants. They reflect hundreds of years of legislative and judicial balancing of landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities. They include important due process safeguards, judicial oversight, a robust appeals process and mechanisms for expedited emergency review.
Legislators are on track to take away important legal protections from recovery residence tenants and allow recovery residence landlords to temporarily remove or permanently evict tenants without judicial oversight, without guaranteeing continuous access to safe housing and without recourse.
Legislative proponents appear to hope that landlords will just do the right thing and that the Vermont Association of Recovery Residences will provide meaningful oversight. There is little to justify these hopes.
Currently, most Vermont Association of Recovery Residences-certified recovery residences knowingly violate state law as a standard practice by evicting tenants from their homes without complying with statutory eviction requirements. These practices are in violation of National Alliance of Recovery Residences standards that require recovery residences to comply with all state and federal laws.
The Vermont Association of Recovery Residences, which purports to provide oversight of certified recovery residences and to enforce National Alliance of Recovery Residences standards, supports the unlawful practices and is championing the bill removing tenant rights.
The association has not taken action to hold the certified recovery residences accountable for violating tenant rights under Vermont law or for the serious harm to tenants that often results. It functions more like a lobbyist and trade group for recovery residence operators than as a watchdog group and has not provided credible oversight.
When a recovery residence violates the rights of a tenant by forcing them to leave the safety and sanctity of their home, the tenant often experiences a parade of horrors.
Someone who had a home is now homeless. Many lose their belongings. Lack of safe and stable housing means that any relapse is prolonged and a return to sobriety is delayed by months or years. Overdose risk skyrockets over 1,000%.
With no place to go, some will stay with their drug dealer. Some will return to an abusive partner. Some will stay with someone who wants to exploit them. Some engage in survival sex or experience sexual assault. Some sleep outside. Some become victims of violent crime because it is unsafe to sleep outside or in other unsafe settings. Some engage in survival crime and become incarcerated.
Removing standard tenant protections for recovery residence tenants would sanction and codify dangerous and harmful landlord practices. An alternative system of protections capable of providing a guarantee of continuous safe housing, due process safeguards and credible oversight is not yet in place.
Removal of tenant protections for recovery residence tenants is not necessary or sufficient to increase the availability of sober housing in Vermont or ensure the safety of sober tenants — any more than eliminating tenant protections for all Vermont tenants would be an appropriate, effective or justifiable approach to eliminating Vermont’s rental housing shortage or to protecting sober tenants in other settings.
There are better and less dangerous opportunities to make progress without removing existing legal rights and housing protections from tenants who are at such imminent risk for homelessness, overdose, incarceration, exploitation and death.
At a minimum, lawmakers should mandate an independent safety evaluation of this risky and premature change in policy and review the policy next session.
