Can You Be Evicted For No Reason – Rachel M. Cohen is a senior reporter covering social policy. She focuses on housing, schools, homelessness, childcare and abortion rights and has reported on these issues for more than a decade.
In most US communities, renters have very little security to stay in their homes long-term if they want to. Landlords can raise rents, evict tenants through court with little difficulty, or simply choose not to renew their lease. Nearly 5 million Americans lose their homes to foreclosure and foreclosure each year, and millions more face the threat of home loss.
Can You Be Evicted For No Reason
In July 2021, local lawmakers in Albany passed New York’s first “good cause” eviction law — a city ordinance that affirms tenants’ right to renew their leases, defines what can lead to eviction, and also protects against “unjustified” rent increases exceeding 5. %. Within months, four other towns in upstate New York—Kingston, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, and Beacon—followed suit.
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But tenant advocates didn’t have much to celebrate. The owners challenged the measures in court, arguing that local laws violated their state property rights. In three separate rulings in the past six months, courts have agreed and struck down the “good cause” laws in Newburgh, Albany and Poughkeepsie. Kingston MPs tentatively repealed their measure two weeks ago.
A statewide “good cause” deportation law is now at the center of one of the most important battles in the New York legislature. It reflects growing attention from housing advocates across the country, who say lawmakers must do more to prevent the harms clearly associated with home loss, including greater job loss, debt, suicide and reduced access to credit.
Similar state-level “good cause” measures have recently passed in California, Oregon and Washington state, and lawmakers in Colorado, Connecticut and Maryland have taken up the idea this year as well.
Homeowners groups say the “for good reason” eviction rules will upset the housing market at an already volatile time and slow much-needed new construction. Supporters of the protections say this is simply fear-mongering in the real estate industry, noting that in states that have already passed “good cause” eviction laws, construction has continued apace.
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No state has had a longer “good cause” ordinance than New Jersey, which passed its own version in 1974.
“There is a thriving rental market in New Jersey that has not collapsed by any stretch of the imagination,” said Peter Hepburn, a sociologist at Rutgers University-Newark and an analyst at Princeton’s Eviction Lab.
Julia Salazar, the New York senator who is leading the push in her state legislature to evacuate “for a good cause,” said the opposition is largely driven by those “who want to exploit people’s need to stay.” She claimed there was too much wrong information on her bill.
“No one is saying we have enough housing stock or that we don’t need to build, and I think we urgently need to build more housing,” she told . “If ‘good cause’ was actually a bar to that, then I would certainly be concerned, but the reality we’ve seen in states like New Jersey and Oregon is that it’s not.”
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However, whether these laws will provide the kind of protection advocates have long sought is unclear, as many common grounds for eviction — such as a nuisance or property damage — are listed as “good cause” in the statute. . One hope, however, is that it could provide more regulation for the countless informal evictions that usually take place out of court. To date, there has been little research on the effectiveness of the laws in states that have recently passed them, in part because they are so new and in part because it is challenging to isolate the effect of the “good cause” from all the other covids. 19. tenant protections.
In New Jersey, advocates argue, “good cause” has not been a strong deterrent against evictions, in part because its language prohibiting “unreasonable” rent increases does not have a specific threshold (such as 5 percent ), which makes implementation difficult.
“The cautionary note I would sound is that every ‘good cause’ statute allows for eviction for nonpayment of rent,” Hepburn said. “And non-payment of rent is by far the most common cause of evictions.”
Laws requiring “good cause” for eviction (sometimes called “just cause” or simply eviction “for cause”) are tenant protections designed to give tenants a greater sense of housing security and to empower them to hold owners accountable. responsibility for bad conditions without fear of retaliation. .
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Laws vary from country to country, but always include specific reasons why a landlord may choose to legally evict a tenant or choose not to renew a lease. A tenant can then contest an eviction in court if they believe it was ordered without a legitimate reason.
The National Coalition on Low Income Housing lists three essential components of “good cause” legislation. Beyond defining the legal basis for an eviction, attorneys argue that most place limits on rent increases (some of these limits are more vague than others), and most laws also include expanded requirements for written eviction notices, so that tenants have enough time to collect any documentation they have. you have to challenge it. In Oregon, for example, landlords must give tenants they want to evict 90 days notice.
While there hasn’t been much research to date on the impact of “good cause” deportation laws, some evidence suggests that they do make a difference. A study found that local “good cause” ordinances in four California cities reduced eviction rates between 2000 and 2016. The researcher concluded that the measures “have a significant and visible effect on eviction rates and eviction registrations .” and offers a low-cost policy solution to other states and cities. Other advocates note that traditional deportation data — which is based on court records — generally fails to capture the 72 percent of forced removals that occur outside the court system.
Ned Resnikoff, California policy director for YIMBY, said he doesn’t think there is yet reliable data on how much of California’s “good cause” measure will take effect in 2020, in part because some moratoriums on expulsion remain in effect. “But the Turner Center found that the rent-fixing clause [of the law] is not being properly enforced, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that we may face a similar problem with the just cause defense,” he said. for .
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Progressive activists have called evacuating “for a good cause” a top priority this year, and powerful Democrats in Congress, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerry Nadler and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have said also in support.
The bill would prohibit rent increases that exceed 3 percent of the previous rent or 1.5 percent of the Consumer Price Index, whichever is greater. That can provide significant protection: Even among New York’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, tenants are seeing rent increases next year that could range from 5 to 16 percent.
The New York bill would go further in protecting tenants than the “good cause” laws that have been passed on the West Coast, as New York’s proposed rent increase restrictions would apply not only to older units, but also for new and future housing.
The Community Service Society of New York, a progressive advocacy group, estimates that 1.6 million New York families would be protected from eviction based on unreasonable rent increases under Salazar’s bill.
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Landlords are fighting back, arguing that the pandemic eviction moratorium is already putting them under severe financial pressure, will lead to more court delays and will leave them financially vulnerable in an inflationary time. The right-leaning New York Post criticized the proposed law because it could discourage new housing and put existing homeowners out of business.
Tim Foley, CEO of the Building and Realty Institute, which represents real estate professionals in the Westchester and Hudson region, told his members he worries it will affect their ability to get financing to complete their projects. . He noted that banks, including the recently collapsed Signature Bank, have scaled back or stopped lending after New York state tenant protections were passed in 2019. His organization also found that repairs and maintenance of stabilized units rents have fallen following the 2019 law, suggesting there may be “unintended consequences” for tenant rights law.
Foley said his members instead support bills to expand legal representation for low-income New Yorkers during eviction proceedings (known as “right to counsel”) and to expand access to housing vouchers.
Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, a landlord advocacy group with about 600 members, said she believes her state “already has very strong tenant protections” and disagrees with advocates who they say otherwise.
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Salazar said he sees Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul as their biggest political obstacle and has previously indicated she is open to changing the bill. Lawmakers tried and failed to pass a similar bill in 2019, but Salazar believes more elected officials are now embracing a “fair housing” platform.
Hochul, who unveiled her housing agenda earlier this year, has so far expressed disinterest in the proposed “good cause” eviction bill, although her proposals have failed to gain traction and pressure remains for MPs to to do something about the affordability crisis.
Despite research showing harm associated with evacuation, it was only after the pandemic that the government stepped in to help
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