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Does not include rent control sought by tenants’ rights advocates
By VDC staff
Tenants get some protection, landlords get some protection in what’s being portrayed as a compromise bill about evictions and rental agreements.
On January 29, The Vermont House Committee on General and Housing unveiled a new twenty-nine page bill, H.772, that makes numerous changes to rental agreements and substantive changes to the rental eviction process. Sponsored by Committee Chair Representative Marc Mihaly (D-Washington 6), the bill makes compromises to strengthen protections for tenants while reforming the eviction process to encourage landlord confidence.
“The theory behind the bill is pretty simple, rather brutally simple, which is to give each side what it most wants, regardless of the fact that the other side really doesn’t want what the other side wants. It really focuses on giving each side what it wants”, said Mihaly.
Information for In Committee news reports are sourced from GoldenDomeVt.com and the General Assembly website.
The bill broadens the scope of for-cause evictions and shortens the timeframe on the eviction process. It expands the conditions for evictions to include repeated late rent payments, refusal to allow access to the unit by the landlord, refusal to accept reasonable changes to the lease, and the tenant interfering with the health or safety of others.
In the compromise, the bill eliminates no-cause evictions to ensure that tenants are only being evicted when they have committed an offense to have cause to break the lease agreement. The bill also makes changes to the way that landlords are allowed to raise rents, limiting rent increases to once per year and only in amounts that are reasonable. The only variation is in the event of a property sale. When a buyer purchases the property, they are restricted in the amount they are allowed to raise rents to a maximum of 3% above the consumer price index within the first year.
When explaining how he crafted the compromise in the bill, Mihaly made specific reference to rent control policies, which have been the subject of recent media attention in places like New York City. “Tenants very much would like to see what I would call rent control, that is a control over rents generally, and there are states that have that, although most don’t. This bill does not contain rent control”, said Mihaly.
This is not the only housing bill under the committee’s purview this session, and not even the only bill that addresses tenant-landlord issues. As reported by Vermont Daily Chronicle on January 23, H.688 introduced by Rep. Deborah Dolgin seeks to make similar reforms. Mihaly explained that his intent is to use his bill as a vehicle and common ground with the different housing bills before his committee this year.
He finished his introduction of his bill by acknowledging his view of the problem that his bill seeks to address:
“I don’t have an answer to this problem. When you have a situation where there are really bad actors on both sides, and there are. There are terrible landlords and there are just terrible tenants. When you have a situation with really bad actors on both sides, the tendency for each side is to want to address the bad actors. But you have to be careful because most people aren’t bad actors. Most tenants are great tenants. Most landlords are fine, but if you aren’t careful and you address the bad actors, you can hurt the good actors by going too extreme by doing something that doesn’t make sense for the big middle. And so that’s a real problem when you’re trying to craft legislation where you have these extreme examples.”
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Categories: In Committee
Reasonable rent is not addressed I see. Average rents from 2000 rose 117% by 2025. This is what must be addressed. Rental rate reset. Our COL has risen, wages have not. Tech jobs replace mechanical and ag jobs. Vermonters don’t tend to move around a lot. Techies are paid highest and can afford the rents for studios and homes, replacing the people who are the character of these hills
Under just because you can doesn’t mean you should … The people who can’t afford the rents, shouldn’t they be offset somehow? Longevity and culture? We didn’t do anything wrong.
Rental assistance has a long wait time. So long people die waiting.
This stinks and shows an extreme disloyalty to those Vermonters who have built and maintained the state for over half a century.
Something really wrong about this, and never spoken of.
If an eviction is proceeding through the courts the court should make it their responsibility to insure that the rent is being paid during the process. If it isn’t, then the court should allow the eviction to proceed immediately.
Rents now into the thousands each month are crazy. $1,800 for a one-bedroom apartment. Seniors and the disabled get a yearly COLA, but they give you a small increase and either raise your rent or if you get EBT because you got a COLA, they decrease the amount of EBT that you get. That just doesn’t compute. Get an increase in one source of income just to turn around and get a decrease in EBT. Why bother giving the increase in the first place when it is just going to get taken away in another place.
Squatting remains a big problem in the state of vermont…
It appears there are absolutely no laws that refer to squatters in the state of vermont, and we know it’s a big problem. In rutland city, we had a case where someone was there during a rutland property inspection and was injured by one of the squatters on the property, and nothing was done by the rutland police department or then mayor david allaire..
In another incident, just up the road on cherry street in rutland vermont there were shooting victims as a result of squatters…
Where are the police and why aren’t they giving input to these lawmakers so something can be done about squatting and the immediate removal from these personal properties that they overtake..
It’s as if homeowners have absolutely no control over the properties they own.And are expected to continue to pay rents and water bills and sewer bills.And electric bills, while these people inhabit their houses…
This is totally sick that we have elected officials that ignore what is going on to punish the law abiding taxpaying citizens in this state..
There has been testimony from me before the police commission in rutland vermont on several occasions… it was amazing that after a year of requesting information from the police department that I have never received it…
I was lied to by the police chief during a meeting and I have the proof because it comes from the ex city attorney during a meeting I had with her..
I have had my civil rights violated when attempting to receive public information from the police department.In rutland vermont..
It’s a fact.The report that was filed with state’s attorney sullivan was had lies by the rutland police department…
I personally spoke to sullivan, and he completely ignores what took place…
I have videos of all of these things that have gone on, in spite of the fact people weren’t real excited when I was videotaping my interactions with these people.
I attempted for a year to get information on body cams. worn by the police department so I could request the information from those body cams…
I have video of three police officers charging at me because I was in rutland city hall requesting public information….
I was told by the rutland police chief that being in city hall requesting public information could be construed as stalking…
There has been a statement that I gave to the board of alderman.That was completely ignored… I have since asked david allaire for help in getting the video and he promised he would help. However, he has ignored all requests since then…
When I spoke at that meeting, I submitted a packet to be placed into the minutes of the meeting… Since then, I have gone to speak to the city clerk only to find out that board of chair at that time, alderman talbot, told her it wasn’t necessary to keep those things that I submitted…
You can see in that video of that meeting that I did request my packet be placed into the minutes of the meeting because I did not want to take the time to read the packet before the board during the meeting..
I spoke at a rutland safety committee meeting regarding squatters and alderman Sharon davis attempted to block me from speaking, and in spite of the fact that I did get to speak nothing shows up in the minutes…
In the incident that i’m addressing the police chief nor the committee not anyone has divulged the name of the person that committed the attack.
I have asked the police chief for the information..
I have asked the police commission, who is headed up by peg flory for the information.
I asked the chair of the police commission at that time…. Sean seargeant for that information and I have never received it..
And now I am researching to see how sean seargeant could alter minutes from the police commission meeting without approval from the board prior to doing that..
There is a lot of corruption in the city of rutland vermont, and it needs to be rooted out and fixed.
We need to really rethink who we are going to vote into positions that represent us and our ability to fight crime.
The people that own houses in the city of rutland vermont, and also in the state of vermont should be scared to death because there is no one, and there are no laws to defend them by this corrupt government, that is running our state.
what is the reason for doing away with no cause evictions? in most cases landlords need to give 3 months notice for no cause evictions ,there are good reasons why a landlord does not have to give a reason like wanting to remodel the building? this protects the landlord rights to have tenants move and give ample time for the tenants to move out?