This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
A bill that originally sought to streamline the eviction process and rebalance Vermont’s landlord-tenant laws died on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon.
It was a dramatic turn for a bill the Senate had already largely stripped down to a study. But its remaining provisions proved divisive enough to split the Senate in a rare 15-15 vote after a flurry of amendments. Lieutenant Governor John Rodgers issued the tiebreaking no-vote to kill the bill.
“This bill … is a mess,” said Sen. Thomas Chittenden, D-Chittenden Southeast, on the Senate floor, explaining why he decided to vote no on the bill, H.772.
The legislation began as an attempt to “weigh the rights of disparate groups in completely unrelated circumstances” against each other, Chittenden said, amounting to what he called “a false moral equivalency.”
Several other Democrats – Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast and Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central – joined Chittenden and a majority of Republicans to oppose the bill, forming an unusual coalition.
“I just think this was the wrong way to approach this very complex and thorny topic of landlord-tenant law, and I hope that the next Legislature takes these things on merit,” Chittenden said.
H.772 passed the House in March. It sought to shorten the time it takes to evict a tenant in Vermont when the renter has fallen behind on payments or has breached their lease.
The bill contained benefits for tenants, such as longer timeframes when a landlord ends a lease for no cause, in addition to limits on what landlords can charge for a security deposit and how often they can increase rents. But advocates for renters argued that the bill’s hastened eviction process for cases where tenants were at fault would increase homelessness.
Meanwhile, Vermont’s large nonprofit affordable housing providers lobbied for the bill, arguing that its provisions to expedite evictions for people who threatened the safety of others on their properties would help protect the bulk of tenants from the harmful actions of a few.
As the bill wound through the Senate this spring, the Judiciary committee removed the provisions that would have sped up evictions. That came after court officials raised concerns that hastening evictions could pose problems around staffing capacity and privileging eviction cases over other types of cases. Senate lawmakers instead directed the courts to study the feasibility of creating a dedicated docket for mediating landlord-tenant disputes.
Senators left a few policy changes in the bill, however, which ignited heated debate on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon.
One such measure would have allowed a landlord to get a no-trespass order against the guest of a renter or a prior tenant if that person has violated lease terms – or state or federal law – while on the property.
Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, chair of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, spoke in support of the provision, saying it would help prevent situations like the one that played out at Burlington’s Decker Towers in recent years, in which tenants were intimidated by people buying and using drugs on the premises.
But not all Democrats were on board with the no-trespass changes, arguing that they were too punitive towards tenants absent other protections. Ram Hinsdale, another member of the Senate’s housing committee whose spouse is the property manager for a prominent Burlington rental business, attempted to push through an amendment to tack on protections for disabled tenants facing eviction. The last-minute change saw little support from fellow lawmakers.
“There is a balance of power that’s really important to visualize and protect in this case, where one person is at risk of losing their housing and the other person is at risk of losing financial remuneration,” Ram Hinsdale said on the floor.
In the meantime, Republicans disfavored more pro-tenant provisions in the bill, including a measure that would bar a landlord from evicting a tenant who has sought medical assistance for a drug overdose.
“We’re talking about substance abuse disorder becoming essentially a tenant protected class. This shifts the risks to the landlords,” said Sen. Dave Weeks, R-Rutland. “My concern is for mom-and-pop landlords, and their law-abiding tenants.”
Negotiations on amendments ultimately fell apart within the Democratic caucus, and the bill failed to pass, to the surprise of observers.
Rep. Marc Mihaly, D-Calais, H.772’s original sponsor, expressed his disappointment that the bill died in the Senate.
The status quo isn’t working, he said. Potential landlords refrain from offering rental housing because of the specter of lengthy eviction disputes in court, and tenants have little protection in instances where a landlord wants to repurpose a building. He felt like the bill the House produced – which garnered bipartisan support – took a balanced approach to the issue.
“It’s not like we need more testimony. Everything that could be said was said,” Mihaly said. “What we need is people making decisions.”
