Property owners have a lot to worry about when they rent an apartment. They must ensure that the property meets state health and safety standards. All landlords must abide by federal and state laws that prohibit housing discrimination. And smart landlords spend time screening tenants carefully to make sure they don’t end up with a trouble-making deadbeat who will trash the apartment and live rent-free for months.
These are just some of the landlord responsibilities in Massachusetts, which is considered a pro-tenant state by many measures. Considering all the rules and responsibilities, being a landlord can be downright daunting.
So it’s understandable why property owners and those in the real estate community would be wary of any new efforts to enact even more housing restrictions and rules. Their reaction to a bill that seeks to provide housing protection to victims of stalking, domestic violence and sexual assault, however, appears a bit overboard.
Advocates for battered and abused women (or men) have been struggling for more than four years to get a law passed that would allow women to break a lease without facing a penalty if they are doing so to escape an abusive spouse or partner. Recently proposed modifications to the law, if passed, would also prevent landlords from evicting or failing to renew a lease based solely on the person’s status as a victim of domestic violence.
The bill’s supporters say there are few safe housing options for victims and their children. Waiting lists for subsidized housing are long, and emergency housing shelters are overwhelmed. They say many women end up staying in abusive households because they fear they will become homeless. And, they argue, why should the victims, who have already been terrorized, be forced to move from stable housing that they’ve worked hard to obtain?
The advocacy groups say over the years, they’ve tweaked the bill to take into consideration the concerns of property owners. But landlord groups, namely the Small Property Owners Association, claim the eviction protection portion of the bill would force landlords to keep tenants who are noisy and disruptive. They fear that other tenants will move out to escape their unruly neighbors.
And some even suggest that women would lie about domestic violence in order to keep their housing, even though landlords would be able to request proof of domestic violence, such as a police report. “There are people who would use this to scam the system. That’s our biggest concern,” Greater Boston Real Estate Board CEO Greg Vasil told Banker & Tradesman recently.
But under the proposed bill, landlords could still evict domestic violence victims for reasons provided under the current law, including not paying rent, engaging in criminal conduct and disturbing the quiet enjoyment of other tenants. The bill, if passed, wouldn’t mean a domestic violence victim can never be evicted.
A landlord could still seek to evict a tenant if he or she is causing disturbances, like blaring heavy metal music at 2 a.m., and another tenant threatens to move out because of those disturbances. In such cases, a tenant would be allowed to stay only if a judge determines that she is complying with the terms of her lease, and that the so-called disturbances were the result of domestic violence. And a judge would be able to evict the abuser or stalker who is engaging in disruptive behavior. In other words, a judge would have to decide if a renter was truly trying to “scam the system.”
The Bay State bill parallels federal legislation that applies to public housing only. This law would provide housing protections to victims who live in private and state-subsidized housing. Twenty-three other states have laws that provide some form of housing protection for domestic violence victims.
It’s time the Bay State step up and do the same.
