HARTFORD, CT – The Housing Committee moved forward Thursday with a controversial proposal to greatly expand protections against no-fault evictions.
The bill proposes to end “no fault” evictions and replace them with “just cause,” where a landlord cannot force a tenant to move out of a property at the end of a lease without a reason. Proponents say that it’s critical to family and community stability that people be allowed to stay in their homes. Landlords say that it upends the very concept of a contract if tenants are allowed to stay in housing in perpetuity.
Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, framed the debate as a matter of freedom versus coercive force used by the government.
“We’re getting the government taking away the freedom of the people to engage in commerce and to exercise their rights freely,” he said, as just cause eviction would allow tenants to stay in rental housing beyond the end of a contract. “I think this will have an unbelievably negative effect on the way rental real estate transactions occur in the future.”
Sampson went on to call the bill unconstitutional, and even “un-American” for circumventing free market principles in his view.
“Part of the reason that we’re here today is that we have to protect people who have to deal with bad landlords, who don’t have the wherewithal, who don’t know their rights. We are building on what we did in the last session. Why would you need elected officials if we didn’t have a job to do, to protect people?” Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, said in response to Sampson.
While Rep. Steve Weir, R-Glastonbury, took issue with the bill, he focused more on the conditions of rental properties than the tenant’s ability to remain in them.
“I was really upset to hear about some of the conditions people are living in with health violations, building code violations, rats and unsanitary conditions. It’s inexcusable,” he said. “That’s certainly a failure of the landlords, but I also see it as a failure of the local government in the municipality, who is putting [the state legislature] in the position of making a broad brush piece of legislation that applies to everybody around the state.”
Rep. Tony Scott, R-Trumbull, echoed Weir’s sentiments.
“The majority of the issue is the crappy conditions residents live in. That’s not getting fixed in this bill. Even if they stick around, even if they don’t get kicked out, they’re still living in crappy conditions. That’s unacceptable. We need to do more, and if the municipalities and housing authorities are not doing their jobs and fixing this, then we as a state need to step in and fix it for them. Even if this bill passes, there is still work to be done, and that means we need to fix these horrible conditions people are living in,” he said.
Rep. Larry Butler, D-Waterbury, offered support for the bill but also agreed with Weir and Scott that the bill doesn’t address the root problems of evictions.
“The state of Connecticut needs to take a look at the eviction process at large, how it works and how it doesn’t work. Going forward, this has been something that;s been questionable for decades now and it’s time for someone to sit down and be serious about what’s working and what doesn’t work. What we have in front of us today is just a small part of a very large problem,” he said.
Landlords are opposing the measure and lobbying against it.
“At a time when Connecticut renters need more new and refurbished apartments, the Housing Committee just dealt a major blow to our ability to support and sustain safe and well-maintained housing,” President of the Connecticut Apartment Association Kelly DeMatteo said. “Lapse-of-time lease non-renewals are rare — and they are used to keep residents safe or when an owner needs to renovate and upgrade a building. The legislature has no business violating renters’ and apartment owners’ rights by nullifying the end dates of mutually agreed-to lease contracts.”
After more than three hours of debate, the bill was successfully referred to the floor of the Senate on an 8-5 vote with three abstentions.
As of Friday, March 1, the the committee had received 404 written testimonies on the bill.
