This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
Each time the nonrenewal notice came, Nora Aronds felt the same sinking feeling.
The 29-year-old social services worker has lived in seven Burlington apartments in the nearly eight years since she graduated from the University of Vermont. Three of those moves were precipitated by landlords declining to reup her lease, Aronds said. There was the time a landlord informed her that the company would not renew her contract by default because her roommates planned to move out come spring. And there was the time a property owner showed up at her door to give a tour to new prospective renters before Aronds had a chance to re-sign, she said.
This cycle of constant moves – amid an exceptionally tight rental market where costs have soared over the last half decade – has left Aronds with the impression that her landlords had outsized control over her personal decisions.
“The power dynamic felt unequal, especially in light of the housing crisis in Chittenden County,” Aronds said in an interview.
After years of punting on reform, lawmakers are revisiting the thorny topic of landlord-tenant law this year. Before them are familiar proposals to place guardrails around the “no cause” terminations Aronds experienced. Also in front of legislators are measures to shorten the amount of time it takes to evict a tenant in Vermont, pushed by landlords who say that court cases can drag out for months.
Taken together, the proposals pose a referendum on the current balance of power between landlords and tenants. Landlords argue that Vermont’s laws skew toward renters, and that the state’s tenant protections steer prospective landlords away from renting out homes that Vermont desperately needs. And tenants say that the state’s razor-thin rental vacancy rate and high prices give them little leverage over landlords.
To Rep. Marc Mihaly, D-Calais – the chair of the House Committee on General and Housing, the current venue for these debates – the choice before lawmakers is grim.
“To be really dark about it, I think the world we are operating in is: Do we increase homelessness by making the [eviction] process more efficient, or do we increase homelessness by discouraging landlords from staying in,” he said to committee members last week.
The bill receiving the most attention from lawmakers is H.772, a proposal sponsored by Mihaly that seeks to give concessions to both landlords and tenants.
The bill would cut down the amount of notice time a landlord needs to give a tenant before an eviction in most cases. If a tenant falls behind on rent and a landlord wants to evict them for nonpayment, the notice would go from two weeks down to one. If a landlord seeks to evict a tenant because of the renter’s criminal activity or the damage they have caused to the home, the notice period would get cut from 14 days down to three days. The bill would also shorten timelines once an eviction case enters the court process.
In 2025, close to half of all 1,803 eviction cases in Vermont were resolved in court in under 90 days, according to court data provided to VTDigger/Vermont Public by state court administrator Teri Corsones. About 20% of cases took longer than six months to get to a resolution.
Landlords contend that the process takes too long. Angela Zaikowski, director of the Vermont Landlord Association, told lawmakers this month that Vermont’s eviction court process takes longer than in neighboring states – and that the specter of a lengthy, costly eviction case has prompted landlords to become “more choosy.”
“They’re not taking risks on applicants, because they know there is such a long process if there’s a problem at the end,” Zaikowski said.
But faster eviction turnarounds will afford renters less time to get aid, said Jean Murray, an attorney with Vermont Legal Aid. About two-thirds of the eviction cases the law clinic and its partner Legal Services Vermont has assisted with over the last several years have involved tenants falling behind on rent, she said.
“These very short timelines will prevent quite a few people from responding on time,” Murray said. “There simply won’t be time for them to get the assistance they need to keep up with the rent and keep the apartment.”
H.772 also seeks to give renters added protections. It sets limits on what landlords can charge for a security deposit and puts a cap on how often and how much they can increase rents, a move that has frustrated landlords who say it will curtail their ability to keep up with rising property taxes and operating costs. The bill also seeks to make some eviction records confidential, a move Mihaly said is aimed at assuring that a prior eviction notice doesn’t dog a tenant’s chance of securing housing in the future.
The bill would not, however, enshrine the “just cause” eviction protections that tenant advocates – and some Democrats and Progressives in the Legislature – have tried and failed to get past the finish line since 2021.
To Mihaly, such protections “basically don’t give the landlord the option of non-renewal.” Retaining no-cause evictions is important to allow landlords a simpler way to end leases when “a landlord’s finding the tenant very difficult, but it isn’t coming to the point where they would really want to go to the expense and the trouble of filing an action,” he said.
Mihaly’s panel is slated to continue trying to balance the scales on landlord-tenant law over the coming weeks.
