Harbin: We want Vermonters to feel safe in their homes

By Angie Harbin (and others)

While Vermont’s visible challenges with drug trafficking maybe happening on streets and in parks, what’s happening inside residential apartment buildings is also putting citizens and their neighbors at risk, largely out of sight. These illegal enterprises are surprisingly often operating under tacit protections from State law and the resulting risks are exacerbated by a lengthy court process that takes months to resolve. And this is putting vulnerable Vermonters in harm’s way.

A piece of legislation, H.772, addresses some of these issues. Known at the State House as the “landlord-tenant bill,” it is working its way through the Legislature and gained passage by a 120-21 rollcall vote in the House a couple of weeks ago. The Senate is now taking up the bill.

H.772 makes changes to expedite rental termination and eviction processes when there’s a real reason, while lengthening the time for no cause evictions – and following compelling testimony by advocates, offers tenants the opportunity to ask for part of their security deposit back early. It also prevents landlords from raising rent more than once per year. The bill attempts to balance the need to move faster to remove threatening tenants, and give more time when tenants have done nothing wrong.

The State’s mission-based housing nonprofits cover every county of the state. We manage about 8,300 apartments, and we support this bill.

Our tenants are working Vermonters, older Vermonters, and/or Vermonters living with disabilities. Roughly a quarter of them were unhoused prior to securing their apartment.

Our organizations have been tasked by the State to serve the most vulnerable people in our communities, and even more so since the pandemic. This is our mission, and we have been trying to meet the needs of our tenants across the state by increasing the services we offer.

When someone lives in one of our apartments, they have security of tenure – meaning if they abide by the lease and pay the rent, they will have their lease renewed. Rents are stabilized and only increase with the actual cost to operate the property (including property taxes as our properties are not tax exempt). By one survey, residents rent their apartment an average of about 6 years.

We promise our tenants housing that is safe, secure, and stable.

But too often, in recent years, we cannot fulfill this promise because of limitations in the State’s laws and because of lengthy court processes. That’s why we support H.772.

Specifically, the bill:

• Addresses threats to the safety of others. When a tenant or guest engages in violent, illegal, or threatening activity towards others, we don’t have the tools to protect the people living around them, or our staff. H.772 allows us to move quickly to prevent harm to others by reducing the notice time for a lease termination, accompanied by a sworn statement that identifies the risk. If the threat remains, the bill allows a motion to be filed requesting an expedited process that mimics other timeframes in Superior Court. The threshold for this process is that there’s an ongoing risk; the ability to move faster is critical to supporting the vulnerable tenants living in the building.

• Enables No Trespass orders. In our experiences, tenants are sometimes preyed upon by others, and we have few tools to support them. As victims, they often feel threatened to the extent that they will not speak up. Drug dealing enterprises, especially, have exploited this loophole in the law as it allows people to set up their business under the safety of someone else’s home. H.772 gives us the opportunity to be our tenants’ advocates and rid a property of people taking advantage of them and others by adding specific conditions that allow a property owner to issue a no trespass order.

• Protects staff safety. Our organizations all have stories of violence, threats, or other concerns that current law prevents us from addressing, which is extremely frustrating. Most of our organizations have apartments that are on watch lists requiring two staff to visit; some apartments are assessed as too dangerous for us to even enter. Current situations are also causing enough stress and concern among staff that we are having a hard time retaining and recruiting – even as all of us have increased our resident services staffing to engage with tenants and connect them to other services and work to prevent evictions.

• Supports sustainability. While our primary concern is the safety of our tenants and our staff, we are also seeing a significant impact on our financial stability. When the aspirational goal of resolving an eviction case in the courts is six months and by the Court’s admission they meet that goal 80% of the time; that means that 20% of the time it’s not met. We now spend more money on security than in the past, more on attorneys, and are carrying larger rental arrears than pre-pandemic. Collectively, this amounts to hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars that could be spent in more productive ways. It also threatens the long-term financial stability of our properties.

Collectively, our organizations are calling on action now to protect our tenants, staff and properties.