Senator Moore, Representative Khan, Senator Sampson, Representative Scott, and esteemed members of the Housing Committee:

As a staff attorney with the Civil Legal Unit of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center (CVLC), I appreciate the opportunity to submit testimony supporting S.B. 143: An Act Concerning Evictions for Cause.

CVLC’s mission is to help veterans who have experienced homelessness and mental illnesses overcome legal barriers to housing, healthcare, and income. As the first VA medical-legal partnership in the country, we co-locate with VA medical centers to provide vital legal services to our clients. We work to ensure that our clients, among the most vulnerable populations in Connecticut, have access to the resources necessary to thrive in this state. We believe that expanding the population of those who can only be evicted for just cause will help support this mission.

Currently, 11% of evictions are for lapse of time, also known as “no-fault” evictions. This number underrepresents the number of tenants who are constructively evicted for lapse of time as many tenants, having received notification that their leases are not being renewed, vacate their units before any judgment of eviction enters against them or even before any summary process action is filed in court. The prevalence of no-fault evictions increases housing instability and raises the risk of homelessness for our most vulnerable populations, including low-income families, people of color, and veterans grappling with mental health issues. Many of these people struggle to find new housing given the tight rental market and their inability to pay rental application fees, security deposits, and the current prevailing high rents.

In our experience, tenants are evicted for lapse of time for one of two reasons: gentrification or retaliation. Neither of these is a sufficient justification to dislodge individuals and families from their homes and both fly in the face of wise public policy.

With regard to the first category, gentrification: we frequently see the scenario in which a corporate landlord, seeking to sell its property, and understanding that it is easier to do so if the property is vacant, issues notices to quit for lapse of time to every tenant in the building. We also frequently see the scenario in which a building changes ownership and the new owner proceeds to issue notices to quit for lapse of time to every tenant in the building, with stated plans to renovate and re-let the units at markedly higher rates. These rates might not survive a challenge to a Fair Rent Commission but that is a venue only open to current tenants who receive a proposed rent increase, one reason among many why landlords seek to get existing tenants out and bring new tenants in.

Just last month I opened a case for an honorably-discharged veteran who had lived in the same apartment in New Haven for 24 years, always paying his rent on time and in full, with no allegations of any lease violations ever brought against him during that time, now being told that he was being evicted because the new owner wanted to improve the property. In another of my cases, a working single mother of four was told that her lease, signed ten months ago, is not being renewed because the owner wishes to sell; she is now in the position of trying to find a new home in the same school district where she re-located her children last year, desperately trying to save up enough for a new security deposit (which she will need to pay prior to the return of her security deposit from her current landlord), and knowing that money she put into
improving her current rental property is simply down the drain.

When the original just-cause legislation was passed, in 1980, Senator Sanford Cloud, Jr. argued that it was “in the public interest to preserve a number of dwelling units as rentals for those persons who because of increasing age, infirmity or other functional limitations are least likely to be able to afford to purchase housing and are most susceptible to mental and physical health problems that may result from the trauma of being forced to search for housing in a market where the vacancy rate for residential rental units is approaching zero in many localities.” 23 S. Proc., Pt. 5, 1980 Sess., p. 1430, remarks of Senator Sanford Cloud, Jr.. But the elderly and disabled are not the only ones who are unable to purchase housing or are traumatized by a housing search that seems insurmountable. Our working-class communities, largely communities of color, are equally unable to buy their own homes and they, and their children, are equally susceptible to the mental and physical problems that go along with heightened housing turnover.

Increased transitoriness undermines community cohesion, educational achievement, consistent provision of health care, and employment stability. Allowing no-cause eviction in order to facilitate gentrification elevates corporate profit over the public interest. With regard to the second category, retaliation: we at CVLC see, over and over again, the situation in which a rent-paying, law-abiding tenant who has been a righteous thorn in the landlord’s side – complaining of lack of heat, insect and vermin infestations, mold, leaks, broken locks, or exposed wiring – is abruptly informed that his/her lease is not being renewed or receives a notice to quit for lapse of time. In my experience, the tenants making these requests have been patient and polite, if sometimes frustrated, and have gone through appropriate channels (though often have received no response). As a state-wide organization, we can attest
first-hand to the inconsistency with which our towns and cities respond to conditions concerns, and we have also seen savvy landlords dodge expensive repairs by seeking to get the complaining tenants out instead. Although there are statutes that protect tenants against retaliatory eviction (namely Connecticut General Statutes §§ 47a-20 and 47a-33) these statutes are extremely narrow and place an extraordinary burden of proof upon the tenant, who may not have thought to document every request for repairs. Even with the Right to Counsel program, the vast majority of tenants are unrepresented in housing court, do not know their rights, and/or do not know how to assert those rights. In a best case scenario, an unrepresented tenant who raises a retaliatory eviction defense faces playing a game of he-said she-said in an unfamiliar and intimidating court setting.

I have countless clients who are living in conditions where I would not let my dog sleep but come to me never having complained because they are afraid that, if they do, their leases will not be renewed. They have already struggled to secure their current housing and, as terrible as it is, it is better than being on the street. As long as no-fault eviction is available to landlords, these tenants will continue to suffer silently, in fear.

S.B. 143 preserves the rights of landlords to evict tenants in all cases in which there is just cause: non-payment, serious nuisance, lease violations. But it limits their ability to act in ways that are discriminatory or counter to public policy.

This past Friday morning, driving to work and listening to WNPR, I heard a landlord claim that S.B. 143 is untenable because it prevents landlords from evicting “unruly” tenants. “Unruly” is a dangerous word in this context: it too frequently stands in for words that would be less acceptable, like “people whose culture is different from my own,” or “people who believe in asserting their rights.” The truth is: actual unruly behavior can be defined by the lease, which is, 99.9% of the time, drafted by the landlord and signed by a tenant who has no power to negotiate terms. Under S.B. 143, landlords retain the right to evict tenants for any behavior that is forbidden by the lease, whether that is playing loud music at all hours of the day and night, failing to take out their trash, interfering with the peaceful enjoyment of the premises by other tenants, or having an unauthorized lion on the property. But they cannot evict tenants for
behaviors that have never been proscribed or defined as “unruly.”

S.B. 143 currently limits the prohibition of no-fault evictions to those living in dwellings that contain five or more units. We believe it should be expanded to cover all dwellings except those that are owner-occupied. We see a common pattern of corporate landlords purchasing multifamily homes, rather than large apartment buildings, but masking the extent of their sprawling real estate empires by setting up numerous limited liability corporations. Tenants living in these properties are equally subject to unjust lapse-of-time evictions for retaliatory or gentrification purposes, and are equally entitled to protection. In these scenarios, just as in those described above, the landlords are corporate entities who generally employ property management companies and whose lease renewal determinations are governed by profit maximization calculations.

We do believe that no-cause evictions should continue to be available to owner-occupied properties. We recognize that, in these situations, there may be a legitimate personality conflict between the tenant and landlord that does not rise to the level of a lease violation but makes it untenable for the tenancy to continue.

We believe that S.B. 143 will help Connecticut achieve its stated mission of eliminating homelessness for veterans and increasing housing stability for all, while maintaining landlords’ rights to remove tenants who have failed to abide by the conditions of their leases or who refuse to agree to a reasonable rent increase. We ask for your support of this bill. Thank you.