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A Burlington tenant and housing advocate told the House General and Housing Committee February 19 she has experienced four no-cause evictions since 2022, and urged the lawmakers to pass stronger tenant protections.
At the same meeting, a Rockingham landlord described the financial and other challenges of his occupation – including tenants who won’t pay rent.
The committee this year has taken extensive testimony on just cause evictions, which would replace the ‘no cause’ eviction currently legal in Vermont. To date no specific legislation has been reviewed by the Committee.
Tenant’s Experience with Housing Insecurity
Nora Aronds, a tenant representative, shared her personal experiences with housing insecurity in Vermont. Aronds has lived in seven different apartments in Burlington over the past nine years and has been subjected to four no-cause terminations of her lease since 2022.
Aronds emphasized the stress and difficulty of finding safe and stable housing, especially with Vermont’s low rental vacancy rate.
She advocated for stronger tenant protections, such as statewide just cause eviction legislation and a rental registry.
Aronds also works at a local housing nonprofit, assisting families facing housing crises.
Aronds also spoke to an experience where a landlord stopped by with prospective tenants to tour her apartment without prior notice, even though she had expressed interest in renewing her lease. She also noted that research indicates that many evictions go unrecorded. According to Aronds, for every eviction that goes through the courts, up to 5.5 do not get recorded, but she clarified that this statistic came from a Princeton University study conducted in New York.
Landlord’s Perspective on Providing Housing
John Dunbar, a housing provider from Rockingham, testified about the financial realities and challenges faced by small-scale landlords in Vermont. Dunbar and his brother took over their parents’ duplexes in Bellows Falls in 2014 and have since become increasingly involved in providing housing.
Dunbar emphasized the importance of local, community-minded landlords and the need to support them.
He shared financial data illustrating the costs of updating and maintaining rental properties, including challenges such as lead paint, old plumbing, and weatherization.
Dunbar also raised concerns about tenants who fail to pay rent and the difficulties of the eviction process. He described a situation where a tenant had not paid rent for several months, impacting the property owner’s income.
Dunbar questioned the committee about what recourse a landlord has to obtain payment without incurring significant losses through legal eviction processes. He also asked about the availability of rental relief programs for both non-compliant tenants and landlords.
Dunbar noted that his brother moved his home improvement business to New Hampshire due to more favorable tax regulations and was considering selling his Vermont rental units because he felt the state was more supportive of tenants than landlords.
This report was sourced from the GoldenDomeVT transcript of the Feb. 19 meeting, rewritten by AI, then edited by VDC staff.
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Categories: Housing, Legislation
I agree that the state favors the tenant. I have, in the past, worked in the rental industry and have seen the results of “entitled” tenants. They do not care how they treat the property because it isn’t theirs and they figure that no matter what they break..the landlord has to repair/replace it. When they decide not to pay rent, and they receive an eviction notice…most don’t leave and the landlord has to go through a lengthy (and costly) court process. All the while the tenants are still not paying rent and go about trashing the place for revenge. I have seen this more than once. Or they vacate after trashing the place and leave the refrigerator full of food after having the electricity turned off. In some instances, the refrigerator had to be replaced. The landlord needs more rights, not less. The committee should ask to see pictures of the damages to some of these places and where the deposit will not even start to cover the repairs. As to Ms. Aronds…I have my suspicions that there is much more to her story. Most landlords who have good tenants will try to keep them. It isn’t fun going through the application process and vetting new tenants…most landlords won’t do it unless the current tenant has given them a reason to be evicted. That she has been ousted from so many places….speaks volumes. I have to wonder how many of her past seven landlords would agree with her narrative. I truly believe that the fact it is so hard to evict bad tenants is one reason why people don’t rent places out anymore. It is too difficult to evict bad tenants and too expensive to repair the damage. I’ve been a landlord and wouldn’t do it again in Vermont under the current laws. No way…no how.
4 evictions in 2 years? I think I know where the problem lies.
yes – the problem lies in a person who does not understand what kind of work it takes in order to be a landlord and who should just save her money and buy her own rentals and then see where she changes her perspective.
A non-profit organization out of Burlington – speaks volumes. The majority of issues lie within Section-8 housing vouchers, Vermont Agency of Human Services taxpayer hog trough, Culling-19 suspended mortgage/rent payments, highest inflation in over 40+ years, and countless other societal afflictions that plague the State courtesy of the Vermont Legislature and Administration. Also, if a person has moved seven times in nine years that is a pattern of a nomad and shouldn’t be considered as credible testimony. Yet, when it comes to the woke non-profiteers, they have case files, case studies, and “victims” galore to march into the State House to weep and wail for more money, and never, ever fix the problem, let alone logically address it. They simply love and advocate for their “victims” because the victim is their bread and butter – without them, they don’t have a job. Incentivized poverty is the Vermont GDP afterall.
Vermont really doesn’t have a housing problem – it has a welfare problem, a lack of those “good paying” jobs Phil always promised for a decade, lack of wages to keep up with ever rising taxes and fees, and a copious amount of lackeys and nincompoops. Vermont is not a democracy – it is an idiocracy.
Why is this any of my business?
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it won’t take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. If one or the other breaches an agreement, we have a judicial system to arbitrate/mitigate the disagreement.
So why does the legislature persist in imposing what these people can or can’t agree to?
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ― T.S. Eliot
The dark side of compassion is empathy, rooted in manipulation – manipulating or controlling others for personal gain. It can come from an acquaintance, a politician, a co-worker, a friend, a spouse, …even a child. And it certainly can come from a government with, at best, marginal accountability.
Most of Vermont’s housing problem was created by bad tenants and the laws that protect them. Making it more. difficult to evict someone isn’t going to help
“Aronds has lived in seven different apartments in Burlington over the past nine years and has been subjected to four no-cause terminations of her lease since 2022”.
Even without any lurid details of her living habits, she sounds like a property owner’s nightmare and does not create the impression of a very good “tenant representative”. Regardless of the “housing is a human right” mantra, a rental is a business arrangement with a contract and both sides need to live up their agreed-upon obligations. Perhaps small-scale landlords are not well represented in the Vermont legislature and they fail to realize that the service they provide is essential and made onerous by the regulations imposed by lawmakers and municipalities? Should landlords all sell their properties and “learn to code”?
I own income properties in Vermont. The key to never having this happen is to qualify the tenants with 1 – 3 income (3x the rent equals monthly income), 740+ credit, 2-3 years at a job, 2-3 years rental history and solid personal references. I’ve never had a tenant not be able to pay their rent, and I get top $$ for my properties because they are excellent properties. I would never own a property in Burlington or Rutland due to their poor record of supporting landlords.
I lived in Rural Edge subsidized housing. I subsist on SSI. I always paid rent and was reasonably careful with the place until I found affordable housing and returned to Phila. I got along with management.
The residents up the court from myself, one of whose residency was questionable, simply quit paying rent. It took the drawn out process to evict them.
It took us 18 months to finally get an order to evict. During that time, the tenant paid zero rent, did $18,000 damage to the property, threatened our electrician, threatened to assault my husband, threatened to kill my husband, tried to ram my husband’s truck with his and left dead animals on our property. We hired a housing lawyer and still got nowhere because Vermont is tenant friendly and has zero laws to protect a landlord. The only way we got him out was because he ran the electric bill to $300/month with only electric lights and washer and dryer. Turns out you can try to kill people and destroy their property, but you can’t do something heinous like grow pot in their house. Thank goodness for that.
Was in the rental business only once in my life and it will never happen again. SCAM DEMIC told you not to pay your rent.
There are plenty of protections for tenants in Vermont. If you have ever tried to evict a tenant you would know. I have been burned a few times for over 6 months rent. The court will usually delay and side with the tenant. Most rentals require a lease. If a tenant wants a longer lease, they should ask for it. It should be a legal contract that goes both ways. If the state is going to force things on landlords, they should offer them assistance or they should enact protections to ensure that landlords are not financially damaged. It should not just be one way. Passing bills like these are forcing small local landlords to sell (look at Burlington and Montpelier) and have big corporations move in. The legislature is turning into the Burlington city council.