HARTFORD- A coalition of advocacy groups urged the legislature Thursday to pass a bill expanding just-cause eviction protections to all residents.
S.B. 143. The bill would expand just-cause eviction protections to all renters in the state.
Representatives from the Connecticut Tenants Union, Make The Road Connecticut, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, and PT Partners rallied before the House and Senate went into session.
Under current state law, residents who have disability or are 62 years of age and older, and who live in a building with five or more units, receive just-cause protections on their leases. This means that landlords cannot evict these tenants without reason at the end of their lease.
Several of the people who spoke at the rally described their own experiences with facing eviction, and the uncertainty and stress it caused them.
Leslie Caraballo, a resident of Bridgeport, began her speech with 15 seconds of silence as she looked at her watch.
“That was uncomfortable, right? That’s how I felt when no one was communicating with me [about my eviction]. No landlord was responding back to me, but they served me with an eviction notice to vacate from the property within seven to ten business days. Not due to nonpayment, but simply because they were reconstructing the apartments,” she said.
Sherie Potter, who leads a tenant’s union in Woodstock, said she wants the protections she has expanded to everyone. Her apartment was purchased by Up Realty in 2022, and she said she immediately faced eviction. She was able to stay because she disclosed that she lives with multiple sclerosis.
“I keep my MS to myself, but here I had to use it to stay in my apartment,” she said. “It’s too late for my community, because only three of us are left that lived in my apartment complex. Expand just cause and keep people in their homes because it shouldn’t be easy to make people homeless.”
The issue of just cause eviction reverberates around the state, but has more acute impacts in certain areas. For example, more than 64% of residents in Hartford rent their homes, according to data from the Partnership for Strong Communities.
Josh Michtom, a Hartford City Council member for the Working Families Party, described how just-cause eviction protections empower tenants in the city’s housing,
“Just cause lets people make complaints about bad conditions, because then they know that they can’t be evicted just for having made a complaint, which is what happens,” he said in an interview. “People are afraid to make complaints, because even if they’re caught up on their rent, the landlord can just turn around and say ‘It’s not working out, your lease is over.’ Just cause gives them a little bit of insurance so that they can fight bad conditions, fight mistreatment, and improve the conditions of their housing without losing their homes.”
Landlords and property owners have argued vigorously against S.B. 143. They fear that extending just-cause protections to all residents would make it difficult for them to evict problem tenants.
“Residents should be able to report poor housing conditions without fear of retaliation, which is already illegal under both state and federal law, and landlords should remediate the problem rapidly,” said Kelly DeMatteo, former president of the Connecticut Apartment Association. “The legislature’s update of fines for substandard housing conditions last year was a better way to spur action on this front than S.B. 143, which would make it harder—not easier—to remove tenants causing unsafe and unsanitary conditions for their fellow residents who deserve stable, quality apartment communities.”
New Jersey, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, and California have already implemented just cause protections at the state level. S.B. 143 was voted out of committee in late February on a 9-5 vote along party lines, with two abstentions.
Republican members of the committee expressed concerns that the bill was circumventing contract law by allowing residents to extend their leases in perpetuity.
Under the bill, landlords can evict for nonpayment of rent, refusal to agree to a fair and equitable rent increase, affecting the health and safety of the other tenants or which materially affects the physical condition of the premises, voiding of the rental agreement or material noncompliance with the rental agreement, material noncompliance with the rules and regulations of the landlord and intention by the landlord to use the unit as a principal residence.
