Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Welcome back, everybody. It's still Wednesday, 02/04/2026, and this is the Committee on General and Housing. And this afternoon, we are taking up the issue of landlord tenant regulations in Vermont. And what we're going to start off with is a quick presentation or introduction of landlord tenant bills that are on our wall. There are five of them, and there's actually yet one other that's not in this committee, but it's relevant. And we're going to have some of the bills, Saudia's bills, have been actually formally presented, but a long time ago, and so we asked Saudia to just sort of reacquaint us with the situation. And some of them, Debbie's bill and Chintoshua Dobrevins, etc, have not actually been presented, they'll present them, but in any case, it's the same, just the chance for the author to talk about. Following that, we're going to have a multi bill walkthrough, which will go through all the bills and hopefully in a way that isn't serial, but goes subject by subject, so we can get a sense of the range of options that are before us. And That's what we're doing today. Starting tomorrow, we'll actually start taking testimony on the whole landlord tenant issue and these bills, and we'll also be doing other things as well. But today, we're introducing and having a walk through by counsel at 01:20. So, Saudia, you are up first. I guess she has to state her name for the record.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Thank you. Good afternoon, committee and chair. For the record, Saudia LaMont, Lamoille, Washington District.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And I guess we don't have to introduce ourselves. We don't.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: But thank you for allowing me to reintroduce this bill. As I stated last year, I don't know if anyone remembers, but this was just something to start the conversation. This has been something that's been really important to me ongoing throughout my life. And in this work, it was part of one of the reasons why I ran. So, you know, age 40 speaks to one of the most fundamental needs of every state, stable, and secure housing. Right? And so it's not about us versus them. It's not about landlords versus tenants. This is just to clarify language on when a landlord may terminate tenancy and adds to essential protections against no cause evictions. Right? And also placing some, what I feel to be reasonable limits on annual rent increases and to help people stay housed and mitigate our housing crisis. This is not, you know, a luxury. Think, you know, people think housing is a luxury, but it's honestly, housing is a human right. It's a big when we when people are unjustly or abruptly displaced, It causes significant and detriment harm for the families, the individuals, and those around them. So I just I'm grateful that we're having the conversation. I'm grateful that there are so many other bills that are coming up, and I'm looking forward to the conversations. Just a little bit of data, and not even accurate because we all know I'm not a numbers person, but just from, you know, my online searches, I know there's people in this committee who are way better at doing better research than myself. But, you know, approximately one in one in four households are renters is from what I found, and renters make up our neighbors consider consisting of young professionals, teachers, service workers, seniors on fixed incomes, families working and striving to make ends meet. Right? I'm saying this because we talk about, I've heard in the building, in my time here, people talking about rent renters or people at risk or comes, there's this weird dialogue around what that looks like and who that makeup it is. And so I just want us to be reminded that, you know, these are Vermonters. These are people. These are our neighbors. And whether it's myself or anyone else who does not own property, we are all just one injury, one one accident, one incident away from homelessness. And so I feel like as a legislature, a body, it is up to us to instill healthy boundaries, to build and cultivate that relationship between landlords and tenants so that people can stay housed and have that security. And so that landlords have protections for themselves so that they are not at risk of losing their property to damage or harm, and we don't want other neighbors to be subject to to those things as well. So I think, you know, in restricting no cause eviction timelines and enforcing fair notice, requiring assistance, when there is a no cause determination, limiting the increases, having that in writing and in a reasonable time frame, because I think, you know, people don't realize the amount of time it takes to pack up and move, and helping ensure that, you know, homes are not abruptly disrupted and or thrown on the market, lack of legal resource for all parties involved. It's not anti landlord legislation, it's pro community, pro stability, pro fairness, and it preserves the landlord's right to address the seriousness of the lease violations while protecting tenants from the displacement that shatters lives without justification. So thank you for taking this up again. I thank everyone who presented bills on this. I'm really looking forward to the conversations. Like I said, as they come across the committee, the various components of the different bills, and as the conversations unfold, I just request that we consider the real human stories behind the data to support whatever bill comes out, whether it's this one or any one of the other five. I just really want us to think and be intentional about the conversation we're having, about the impacts. And this is just one prong in a multifaceted, very complex approach to addressing our housing crisis. Right? This was a conversation starter. Here we are, five bills are coming up and I'm ready to take on the afternoon. So thanks for that, guys.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Saudia, thank you so much for the sentiment and everything you said. Debbie, you're up. You can stay there.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: It's hard to hear, though.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This Okay.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: I've listened to that more before. It is, Yeah. The people aren't afraid to hear their stuffs. Plus, I got a sympathy note right here.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: You're hilarious.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: I'm Debbie Dolgin and I represent St. John's Mary Concord and Kirby. H688, it's a bill that's intended to support both renters and landlords by streamlining the eviction process in the cases of nonpayment of rent, lease violation, and criminal activity. These are limited, clearly defined circumstances, and the goal is to create a more efficient, predictable process for addressing the serious violations of a lease. This bill does not change the fundamental rights or responsibilities of tenants or landlords. Instead, it provides protection for landlords when tenants abuse lease agreements. As a result of our current landlord tenant laws, housing is coming off the market because landlords, particularly the small private landlords, cannot afford to operate under these existing systems. Just in St. Johnsbury, our rental registry in the last three years, 200 units have come off the market. And this also affects our nonprofit housing providers, which means it impacts the taxpayers, funded housing as well. When these providers struggle, the consequences ripple through our entire housing system. So h 66 no. It's h six eighty eight is necessary step towards stabilizing Vermont's rental market, ensuring that housing remains available for those who follow the terms of the lease. Several other states, including like Florida, Ohio, Utah, among others have already implemented a streamlined eviction process for these same issues. And Vermont is long overdue in addressing this imbalance. So I do look forward to Legion Council with their walkthrough. But I also wanna remind people of last year that we did give more to the tenants when we took away the social security numbers. You know, so we've already done some things and just wanna remind that legal aid came in. Of course, they brought one of our cases forward about how a judge took the Serviceman Civil Relief Act and accepted the signature on our lease that we had in our lease. That was like two years old. And I asked legal aid and I said, Why didn't you take my current case where the judge did not accept it? So, I just wanna put that out there that we have given already.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you, Debbie. Joshua. Yes, there he is. Right, sorry.

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: Welcome. Thank you for having me.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know what, I think people should introduce themselves to me. Debbie, take it away.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Oh, I'm Debbie Dolgin, I represent St. John's Dairy Property and Family.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: I'm Jonathan Athens Chester, Windham Crafton.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Joe Parsons, good to have you here.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Leonora Dodge, Justice, the CDOS extension. Ashley Bartley, verify. I'm Marc Mihaly, Plainfield, Caledonia, and Marshfield.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Hi, I'm Elizabeth Burrows, and I represent Windsor, West Windsor, and Garden.

[Mary E. Howard (Clerk)]: Hello, I'm Mary E. Howard, and I represent Rutland City District 6.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Saudia?

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: Are I you

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: am. Hi, I'm Saudia LaMont, and I represent Lamoille Washington District, which is Morristown, Elmore, Worcesterwood, very small part of stuff.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Joshua, one of the things that's nice about the committee that I really like is that it actually represents kind of all kinds of Vermont. There's people here from the Burlington or Chittenden County, big cities. There's people like Tom from the middle of just nowhere and everything in between.

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: Agree, it is a great representation. I'm Joshua Dobrevich, I serve Williamstown and Chelsea. Thank you all for inviting me to speak on H756 today. I'm going read from this because it keeps me on pace, otherwise I will ramble. As Vermonters, we all share a commitment to safe, stable housing. It's a foundation of strong families, neighborhoods, and communities. However, when serious criminal activities like illegal drug sales or community trafficking infiltrated rental properties, the impact extends far beyond a single unit. It jeopardizes the safety of other tenants, neighbors, and entire communities. Landlords often find themselves in a difficult position, eager to intervene but hampered by lengthy processes and high costs under current law. Age seven fifty six addresses these challenges head on with practical, balanced reforms. It equips landlords with faster, more effective tools to prioritize safety, impose stronger penalties on those who facilitate serious crimes, and provides essential support to ensure landlords, particularly smaller operators or those in rural areas, aren't burdened unfairly. As outlined in the bill's purpose, this legislation empowers landlords to tackle drug and human trafficking issues, foster safer housing environments, and enhances penalties for exploitation and emphasizes community safety. The bill introduces targeted chain to streamline responses to threats such as shortened notice periods for termination based on criminal activity, illegal drug activity, trafficking, acts of violence that endanger the health or safety, the notice period is reduced to just seven days. This allows landlords to act swiftly without compromising due process, protecting vulnerable residents more effectively. It also includes mandatory notifications. Landlords must notify relevant housing authorities within forty eight hours of a termination notice to tenants receiving assistance. This ensures seamless coordination and support. Additionally, suspected human trafficking must be reported to law enforcement as soon as practical to facilitate early intervention and stop exploitation. It also introduces streamlined court procedures to exploit justice without sacrificing fairness. Defendants' injunctment actions must file and answer within five business days to accelerate the process. For cases involving suspected criminal activity, an expedited hearing can be held within ten days. Motions for immediate possession must include affidavits in lease copies and defendants can oppose with evidence of genuine disputes. If the defendant doesn't respond or contest the motion, the court can issue a default judgment allowing the landlord to regain possession quickly through a cert writ. These measures ensure timely resolutions while providing defendants opportunities to respond, balancing urgency with equity. The bill also increases accountability for enablers, knowingly promoting human trafficking in a dwelling or allowing illegal drug sales in or within 500 feet of a dwelling would now carry up to 10 in prison or a $500,000 fine or both, up from two years and $15,000 Crucially, landlords take proactive steps to address issues are exempt from penalties incentivizing responsibility rather than punishing good faith efforts. Also, the challenges landlord those sections recognize challenges landlords face, the bill establishes the landlord assistance program with the Department of Housing and Community Development. This includes resource and training in collaboration with the Department of Public Safety and Health. The program will develop annually, reviewed guidelines for tenant screening, protecting privacy, training on identifying and reporting human trafficking, and coordination with law enforcement for evictions and prosecutions. Financial reimbursement would be up to 2,500 per complaint for legal costs tied to the human trafficking related termination and injections. And I'm asking for a $2,000,000 general fund appropriation, which will go somewhere else, in fiscal year twenty seven with initial guidelines and trainings due by 01/01/2027 if this bill passes this year. The program ensures landlords have the tools in backing to act decisively, reducing barriers for smaller rural operations. In essence, the bill isn't about burning good tenants or landlords. It's about creating a safer Vermont for all by empowering frontline property owners, deterring exploiters, providing robust support. This bill promotes proactive safety measures, protects vulnerable individuals, and strengthens our communities without added bureaucracy. I believe this legislation strikes a fair and effective balance that aligns with Vermont's values of safety, equity, and responsibility. Happy to take any questions before I do. My background is many things, but I'm also a landlord, two of my residential properties are in various cities. And I do everything I can to provide the safest, most affordable housing I can. And some of this comes from my own personal experience. It also comes from experience with other landlords who try to be the same as I and have been in way worse positions than I have been. So, with any of your stuff going on, if you want a perspective of a landlord who's also a representative, I'd love to come and have a conversation now or in the future.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Very interesting. Thank

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: you very much. Any questions?

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: I've got a question.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Sure. Please. How do you, not you, Representative Dobrevich, not you, landlord Joshua, but you Joshua, How do you define human trafficking?

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: Sowing someone's person for prostitution, coercing people for pornography, holding something over someone so they have to do work for you, for others, for free. I mean, there's tons of examples of it, but these are just some of them, but basically holding someone against their will and forcing them to do things, or I mean, human trafficking can be as much as snatching somebody off the road, putting them into indentured servantry to someone in another state to do their personal dwelling event that person's never seen before. I mean, there's tons of examples around the country, and it's starting to really creep its head into Vermont, which I talked to them, like, oh my god, I'm starting to hear about that. You know, we're not exempt from all these things in our little blacky state.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: Appreciate it. Absolutely. Appreciate you guys having me, and I hope you have

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a And we'll let you know if there's questions that you're the one best one to answer, we'll

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: let you know. Stephen, if it's just a conversation.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Take care guys, thank you, Winston.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: There are a couple of things I want to inform the committee of weeks, so we'll have council come in. Two things, one, I want to speak as the author of one of the bills, which I presented to the committee. I discovered over the weekend, the middle of the night, you know how these things happen, I made a mistake, literally an error. It is not the council's error, it happened in conversations with council, and so there is an unintended error in my bill that is important, which I can explain very briefly. There's a series of, I mean obviously a landlord, there's sections that deal with the landlords facing a situation where someone isn't paying, but that's not with distance relative. My error had to do with a landlord deciding situations where a landlord decides they're not going to re up a lease, you know, over twelve months or up. Or a landlord is repurposing the unit. They're going to remodel it substantially, they're going to use it for themselves or their family, or whatever. In those, the bill, the compromise it strikes, is that in the situations whether it's non payment or destruction of property, etcetera, it speeds up ejecta. But in situations where nobody's doing anything wrong, it's just the landlord who's planning something different, my intention was to increase the notice period to ninety days across the board, because I felt that landlords who are doing this, they can plan for it. If they're not going to renew the lease, can plan for it. Right now, the duration depends on how long people have been living there, and if it's less than two years, it's different numbers for less than two years or more than two years, and different numbers for if there's no lease or if there is a lease, and my intention, and it's confusing, and my intention was just to make it one number if it's less than two years and ninety days if someone's been living there in Penguin for more than two years, and I blew it. In fact, inadvertently, I shortened the notice. You might hear testimony on this, and I just want to tell you it's not my intention. It's up to the committee, whatever it does, but it just was not my intention to do that, and I just blew it.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Yeah. Can I ask a question on it? So are you saying those ninety days or whatever the number is? So let's say the lease let's say it expires the February. Yeah. So you're saying like ninety days before

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: you could afford that. Yeah, you give ninety days or if you give it, you could give it twenty days, but then you'd have to let them stay. Right, exactly. Yeah, but you could give it ninety days before.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Well, that's, I mean, that's After nine months,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: after nine months, yeah, that's intended. Okay. The second thing I want to say is not relate to my bill. I just want to say, because I've been working on this all summer and fall, people please accept that this is hard. It's just hard and the reason it's hard and so consequently, if you feel at times tense, upset, undecided or angry, you are not alone. It's just hard, and the reason it's hard is very straightforward. We are dealing with two contradictory situations. On the one hand, having a place to live is so fundamental to health and happiness, and losing it in today's market in Vermont, if you don't have a lot of money, means that you might be homeless. We all know that. On the other hand, in this country, we have elected to treat, to deal with this human right through the private sector primarily. I mean, we have public sector housing, but even they are dealing with the same profit loss, net income issues that the private sector is dealing with, and it is a fact that the people who are doing this are often small business people who do not have themselves huge resources, And they're running a business, and if the business is no longer viable, they leave the business, which in turn damages the fundamental right of a place to live. Those contradictions, the needs of running a business versus the needs for stable housing are intractable and difficult, and consequently, you shouldn't feel strange or alone if you find this a troublesome area. If you find yourself saying, I can't believe I'm about to say this, as you said once today, you're not alone. I mean, this has happened to everybody who cares, who's a thoughtful person in this area, runs into this contradiction all the time, And I know we'll be civil to each other as we listen, and civil to witnesses who are going to say vastly different things to us, really.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: I just wanted to add something that even the landlord, nobody wants to go through an eviction. It's nothing that you look forward to at all.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No matter how much we streamline it,

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Yeah, that I will be the it's tenant or a landlord.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right. We should didn't He came and left, He's getting a coffee, probably. So next what we are going to do since we are live, is our council has arrived and we are going to have this brilliant, thoughtful, side by side by side by side by side.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Don't know or are prepared just based on that description. So forgive me a moment so I can get organized.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I'm going to give you three documents back up for the record. Cameron Wood, Office of Registered Council. Okay. This first document I'm going to give you is a side by side of the five bills that we were going to discuss. This portion of the side by side is only related to the provisions that amend or address the residential rental agreements chapter. This is the first thing that we're going to talk about. So I'm going pass this one around.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The residential rental factor is dealing with what's in, how you went, what you do, there is a separate chapter about the check.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: That should go all the way down the

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: chair and I will leave one.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Then there's a smells like zubiograph.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay, that's the first

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: thing that we're going to talk about.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Why don't you tell us ahead of time of the next one?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, I plan to.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Can I have one for you?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: This next document is a side by side of four bills. This one is related to the sections around adjustment that we will talk about after we get through the residential rental agreements piece. So if you all remember when you're talking about landlord tenant, you have the residential rental agreement chapter, I'll go through this all in a second, but then you have terminations, how do you terminate a residential rental agreement, and then if somebody stays in the premises after you've terminated the residential rental agreement, you have to take them to court to get an adjutment action to have the sheriff come after you get a writ of possession to remove them. That's what these sections are for. I'm not going to pass this out yet, because we're just going to focus on the perfect. The last document that I'm going to pass out is a cheat sheet, if you will.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Here we go.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: The bills amend different provisions of the residential rental agreements chapter, which we'll get into, but the primary difference among them is how do they deal with termination of a rental agreement. We're gonna talk about this in a little bit, that's where even a side by side gets a little complicated and how it tries to compare apples to apples. So I did my best to draft this little cheat sheet for you, which simply talks about the termination periods of the different bills. So we'll get into a little detail here but I just, this document is a bear to get through so I wanted you to have a little cheat sheet. I thought about setting it up as a bingo card and you could fill it out as we walked through, but I figured that maybe taking my job a little to be like the unprofessional.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I'm impressed.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: At least superficially, I'm impressed. I mean maybe it's all wrong, but it sure looks cool.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Could be. Okay, so the last hump before we dive in, I've worked on these things extensively over the past days. If I have made errors, please forgive me, I'm happy to fix them as we walk along. It didn't get edited, in theory it shouldn't need to be edited because I'm just pulling information from either statute or a bill that's been introduced that has already been edited, but I noticed that when I was copying and pasting things over words were changed slightly which didn't really make sense to me. I thought Word was better than that but just caution for the rest of you when you're copying over large amounts of information sometimes the words change which is interesting, but I believe I've caught everything. If there are errors, I'm happy to fix them, etcetera. So since you all have this, I'm at this point, I'm not going to share my screen unless you would find that helpful. I don't think it would because I'm going to try to walk through this document with you. I did provide all of this to Miriam, so the information should be available. It is online available, so for those following along, you should be able to get it off the committee web

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: page. Saudia, are

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: you there, Saudia? Can you hear? Okay.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: I am and I can. I'm trying to pardon for the interruption. I was just texting with Miriam. I'm joining from a different device because I'm trying to I'm not feeling well, is why I'm not there in person, and I'm trying to use my notetaker to help me take better notes while I am not well. So sorry for the interruption.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's okay. But, also, I just want you to know that on your desk are hard copies of this for when you do come in, and you do have access to it online or your notetaker does as it goes. I hope that's okay. Does that work for you?

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: That's fine.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Okay. Sorry. Okay.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So first side by side, we're looking at H399, H440, H688, H756 and H772. The way I broke this out was kind of section by section. So each bill is in chronological order. As you will see, not all the bills amend the same thing. Some of them amend different things. Some of them all amend the same thing, etcetera. I'm going to somewhat walk through this as it appears on the page. That may mean I'm bouncing a little bit, but I believe this is probably the best way to go about reviewing this so you can review these topic by topic. So the first piece I'm going to talk about is in the definitions section. And I guess before I even get to the page, I believe that you all are familiar with the residential rental agreement chapter. There's a chapter in Title IX, it's chapter 137, residential rental agreements. It governs the contracts that individuals enter into between landlord and tenants regarding the renting of dwelling units. There are we've dealt with this a little bit last year. You made some changes to it regarding the application, social security numbers, etcetera. But the chapter itself just governs the obligation of the parties to a contract for a rental agreement. It has obligations of the tenant, a rent without demand to maintain the unit, to not destroy the property, etcetera. It has obligations of the landlord. The landlord has to provide a unit that is fit for habitation and doesn't have code violations, etcetera. There are provisions about security deposits, how security deposits are maintained, given back to the individual upon separation, provisions about whether subleases can be allowed or not, provisions about ensuring landlord access to the units, these are all in that chapter. So I'm not gonna walk through that for now, we're gonna jump right into the lane. But if you have questions, feel free

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to jump So that chapter contains a lot of information so that it doesn't have to be an elise, right? It just prevails even in the absence of elise.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Because not all of these are written.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Right.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It could be an oral agreement, it's deemed month to month, it can be a month to month. There are actual week to week, occasionally four or twelve month leases or whatever, but these can roll all of them.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, sir. So jumping right in, the first page here, you have some changes on the far right, which is seven seventy two, which is the bill introduced by Representative Mihaly. You have some changes here. I'm gonna point you to the definition of actual notice because this is really important as you walk through the language for that bill. So currently, actual notice, which is defined, and I should highlight at the far left end of your side by side is the current statute. So that's included here for reference. Obviously you know what has changed, it's a standard strike through underline, etcetera, but I felt that it would be valuable to have that language on the far left as you go through. So currently actual notice means the receipt of written notice hand delivered or mailed to the last known address. A rebuttable presumption that the notice was received three days after mailing is created if the sending party approves that the notice was sent by first class mail. And delivered mail. This change will add a lot of additional methods by which you can provide, I should say a landlord or a tenant could provide actual notice delivered by the sheriff, mailed to the last known address or the address provided in the residential rental agreements. The last known address for the landlord may be the unit that the individual is renting from and if they can't hand deliver to them, for example, then mailing it to the location where you're potentially terminating a residential rental agreement may not work. So you can mail it to the last known address of where the person wrote on the rental application. Posted on the door of the dwelling unit and mailed, emailed to an email address included in the lease and mailed, and then you have the revocable presumption.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So it's adding a few authorized methods of providing actual notice. I just wanna say this was an attempt to bring this into the, you know, modern times and to be much clearer, but it was. I do wanna say personally, and I've made a note of it, in light of what is happening to the United States post office in Vermont, I'm not sure if three days is the right number, it might be five or something like that, but I'm making a note of that issue.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Yes ma'am. Well, was just asking for clarification on how to count days. So,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: question, because throughout this chapter and in others it talks about days. If it does not specify then a day is considered a day and it is considered a calendar day, not a business day.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: So like if I mailed it today, is today day one?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: My understanding and I would want to validate this, but yes, today would count as

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: day one. Is this notice provision whichever

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: And let me back up, how I would phrase it would be if it's five days after today then tomorrow would be day one, So if it's providing a fourteen day notice, I would say tomorrow would be day one.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This notice provision carried over into injectment? In other words, does this apply to everything?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: No, it does not, when we get there it does not, sir. Okay, now we have a definition next of immediate family and what you'll see is under three ninety nine and four forty though towards the left, there's the use of the definition of immediate family and it's the same definition. The information is used in the subsection itself, so there's not a definition in those bills, but I'm just highlighting for you when you get there, the definition is going be in sign.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And it comes three ninety nine and four forty are the same.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: On the definition of that immediate payment.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, and in fact I asked counsel to use the definition from those bills.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so we move to the next section. So as you can see this is only in March. I'm going do my best to hit highlights and not walk through word by word each of these things but if you want to follow us on things please feel free to let me know. But as you can see in March, this would require that rental agreements with a duration of twelve months or longer be in writing. And it requires one through 12, all of these pieces of information. Yes.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Just so any rental agreement that is twelve months or longer must be a written rental agreement?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that bill, yes. So it doesn't require a rental agreement,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: if that's in that bill?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: It states that if there is a rental agreement that is twelve months or longer, it shall be in writing. Right.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So my question is, from my research, there is not a single state in our nation that has this requirement. Am I correct in that? I have not done that level of research. I have not confirmed or denied that. I will continue to.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But this section does not, it doesn't say rental agreements shall be in writing and shall be twelve months.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Correct, you could have a rental agreement for six months, in which case it wouldn't have to be in writing. You could have a rental agreement for twelve months that expires and isn't included that would subsequently become month to month that wouldn't have to be in writing.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, but if it is a rental agreement of twelve months, it has to have this in it? Yes. Okay.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: And so quickly identification of the parties, description of the property, duration of the agreement, including whether it's periodic or fixed, financial obligations of the tenant, whether they're of companies for late payment, the amount of security deposit, etc. Again, I'm not going to walk through each of these sections for time purposes, so just understand that that is there. Moving to the next, so I'm at the second half of page three, the bottom of page three, dealing with residential rental applications. So I will pause here and point you to the current section, the current statute on the far left, because you made a change here last If you all recall, you've added in that in order to conduct a background check or a credit check, the landlord shall accept one of those following pieces of information that was added last year. So what you look at I will point you if you go to page four and this is really the pieces to focus in on and this gives me an opportunity to point out I did my best to highlight things that are slightly different but I obviously did not highlight that because it's the whole stop by saying they highlighted, right. I did my best to try to highlight things that are different between the bills. So you'll see in three ninety nine here on the second column, this section already prohibits an app, the landlord cannot charge an application fee, that's current law, but that's all it says, it doesn't define what an application fee is And so three ninety nine adds this definition that is very similar in seven seventy two, slightly different but very similar. It says an application fee and I'm on three ninety nine, an application fee includes a fee or charge associated with a credit check, background check, or third party processing payment or any other costs associated with the rental agreement application. Under seven seventy two, it's slightly different because it says includes any fee or charge to submit a rental application or conduct a background check. If you'll notice it doesn't say anything about a credit check because you want to look at the language under three, a landlord or a landlord's agent may charge a nominal fee to conduct a credit check unless the tenant or applicant provides a credit check as part of the application. That's really the primary difference between those two bills as it relates to that. Ashley, you

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: have a question? I do. I would like to inquire at the sponsor of the bill, if I can. Which sponsor of which Yeah, $7.72.

[Joshua Dobrevich (Representative, Witness)]: What

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: would you, what is your intention on the term nominal? What would you consider nominal?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't think it's a good word. I want to charge the tax cost, the cost and of I think we're going to get comments. I've received written comments from the Landlord's Association, I'll be testifying, personally, think nominal is a meaningless term, but I just think that may charge for, it should say may charge for, that's gonna be one of my proposed changes. Lovely, thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Great.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Unless the tenant provides it, of course, if the tenant provides it, then

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: they don't charge for it.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Could I suggest that it

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: be must reimburse the cost That of

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: wouldn't be in position, it's not in here.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: The last thing I'll highlight under these two bills as it relates to the section is it has language in here that the C, the E on three ninety nine and the C on seven seventy two. Person who violates this section commits an unfair practice in commerce in violation of section 2,453 of this title. What does that mean? In discussion with the sponsors of these bills, my understanding, the concern I'm trying to address here is there's a prohibition on the application, there is no enforcement mechanism or consequence to prohibit it from actually occurring in practice. And so what this would do is it would make it an unfair act on commerce which gives the Attorney General's office the ability to either prohibit acts through an injunction so they could interact with the landlord, get them to agree to stop the practice, and if the landlord continued to do the practice, the attorney general could then go after them in court and assess them fines and penalties.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, Ashley.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Going back to three really quickly, and then I promise it's connected to C, Would that be also at cost or may charge for a background check as well?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I would say in both of them, a charge for a background check would be prohibited. Okay. Now you can change that, but that's one the things I highlighted for you on the definition difference because if you look at the application fee definition, of them, $3.99 and $7.72, specifically say background check is considered an application fee, whereas in $7.72, it doesn't say credit check.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So I guess my question would then be for C, if they're in the violation, would that be a claim based process where someone has to make a claim saying this was violated, or are we going to give the attorney general the ability to look through landlords' documentation?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: The attorney general does not need a complaint to be filed in order to take action in the Consumer Protection Act. Okay, thank you. My

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: assumption is, just so everybody knows, that in July it just comes from March. So my assumption is it's useless unless it wouldn't be raised as a defense or something like that. You know, it had to be raised. The AG consumer, don't legally need a complaint, but I think in reality it's pretty complaint based. It's probably a good assumption.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Okay, moving into the next section 4,457 we're dealing with landlord obligations. So as I mentioned you know not every section of the chapter is here there's a few sections about what are the tenant obligations, mentioned heavy grant demand, an obligation to pay it without demand, you have to maintain the space, not create non compliance, not destroy, etc. Then you get into the landlord obligations around habitability. So you can see under the current statute, landlord shall be deemed a covenant and warrant to deliver premises that are safe, clean, and fit for human habitation. This cannot be waived. So Mr. Chair, you mentioned at the beginning, not all these things are written. And even if they are written, you cannot waive this. And then there's some provisions here about heat and water. You have to provide sufficient hot water. What seven fifty six would do and forgive me, but if I refer to them, I'm simply going to refer to them as the lead sponsor. I understand that there are multiple sponsors. I didn't include the names of the bills because I felt like that was getting too cumbersome and lengthy. But this is the bill that was introduced for the lead sponsor representative, Dobrevich. So what the proposal here is to add two requirements on the landlord, a D and E, so it's not striking anything, would just be new language that would go in the bottom of that section, the landlord shall notify any relevant housing authority within forty eight hours after providing notice of termination of a residential rental agreement. Housing authority isn't referenced, you should probably reference back to the definition of a housing authority, but that should be the state housing authority or a local municipal housing authority. My understanding is landlords are already obligated to do this. What I would advise you to get some information or testimony from housing authorities of whether forty eight hours is current federal law requirement, whether that's more restrictive than their current obligations, less restrictive, etcetera, you just may want to align it there. And I did not reach out to them to have that conversation before Gayle was introduced. But my understanding is that it's already a requirement, so this would just be adding it into state statute. The second piece, this is moving to the top of page five under H756 subdivision E. A landlord shall notify law enforcement of suspected human trafficking as that term is defined in 13 VSA, is where the human trafficking section is, as soon as practicable after the occurrence of the suspected human trafficking within a dwelling unit owned or managed by the landlord.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Yes. I'm sorry, I've been trying to scribble some things down while you've been talking and I don't know whether you have addressed current statute regarding heat and hot water. What happens when we have something where it says in statute that the landlord has to provide heat and hot water, but it's not actually defined what adequacy means. I wish I would

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: have brought them with me and I noticed that I left something in my office. Just a few years ago, you all transitioned the enforcement of these rental housing standards to the Division of Fire and Safety. So it used to be a local health officer would enforce those, now it's that division. They have a code that they have published via rule which gets more specific about what and that I just don't recall it off the top of my head, I'd be happy to share with you, but I do remember it's like you have to maintain certain levels of heating in a building, for example, and depending on like it even references the temperature outside, etcetera. So it's much more specific. That's why it's

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Okay. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Actually

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: just It wanted a applies because it covers multifamily, more rental, not single family residential.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I just had a constituent question about that, this research, thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: And I'll share them with the committee, Monica. Thank you. Okay, all right, moving to the next section. Sorry,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: My landlord shall notify law enforcement. You know what, don't have. I'm gonna wait, thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So in that section that's referenced, and I don't know if it's in 02/13, 2651 specifically, but there is a section that deals with penalties for allowing human trafficking in a building of which you own or manage.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I guess my question was, that then puts a liability on a landlord if they do not?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So the language here says as soon as practical after the occurrence of the suspected human trafficking. So the landlord, there needs to be some it's going to be a defense if a landlord goes in and says, I was not aware. I have no knowledge of this. It's not going to put an additional requirement on a landlord. It's just if a landlord is now aware, they would be required to which I would argue they're already required or at least that's the important thing if they don't and they can be held liable.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You mean under existing law under this section there are affirmative obligations as to anybody who owns property?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I would say yes, would say it's slightly different. You can be charged with the crime if you don't. If you know it and you're not notifying, you can then be charged with a crime for its occurrence. Okay, save that one. So this is just putting in the residential rental agreement chapter a requirement to notify, which somewhat corresponds with the fact that if you don't notify, it's a crime. Okay. 4,461, security deposits. So currently, there's a lot of information in the security deposit section. I didn't include it because there wasn't any changes in seven seventy two or as you can see in any of the other bills associated. But security deposits, a landlord can deduct from a security deposit, for example, to fix damage to the property, etcetera. The landlord has to provide the security deposit back to the tenant within a certain time frame. They have to notify the tenant if they deduct from the security deposit for what reasons they've deducted, etcetera. So there's a lot of meat in that section that's not here. But the change on July is a landlord shall not charge for or receive a security deposit exceeding an amount equal to two months rent in addition to any rent for the first month paid on or before initial occupancy. So if you're paying for the first month, which you have to because you're entering into the units, the landlord can only charge an additional 2 months on top of that for a security deposit. I will highlight one thing that's not here is you have another bill from representative Wood that also makes amendments to the security deposit. Three months? I don't

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: remember either, but representative Wood had the same thing. I can't remember whether it's two months or three months, hardly this was occasioned by, for her, by a landlord who was to charge six months.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I applied for an apartment in New York where I had to be able to show a year of the rent in an escrow account at the age

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: of three. Yeah, it's three votes. I did not, it's very important. In addition to the month? Your first

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: month's tax.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Nobody I'm going try to pull it up while we're talking, but that's okay.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'll grab it and share it the committee.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Currently there is no limitation so somebody could charge six months currently under current law. Just want you all to know that's not a violation.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: moving to the bottom of page five and to the top of page six, okay here's where it's gonna get spicy.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is section four thousand four

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: and sixty seven, it's the section related to termination of tenancy. So here's where if you're going to pay in the residential rental of three months, you have to provide notice of termination. And this is where quickly I'm going to bring you to this sheet.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is not guys in the ejectment world, we haven't gotten through, somebody is being sued, the landlord, this is not where the landlord has gotten to the point where they're stewing, this is just where they're notifying that the rental is open.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Right, so right now how is the current statutory section structured? It has different subsections And in those subsections, it addresses different circumstances where you have to provide termination and different time periods. I originally had this as a PowerPoint I was going to walk through. And then I thought about coming and writing it on the board, but I would have to erase this.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: so I just want you to focus on the first column for just a minute. There is in subsection A, failure to pay rent, there is a notice period for failure to pay rent, which is fourteen days. In Subdivision B1, it is if you breach material terms of the rental agreement, that is currently thirty days. Subdivision B2 is if the tenant is engaging in illegal activity or threatening other individuals who live there, that is fourteen days. Then you get to subsection C, which is about what do you do when there is no rental okay. So maybe you've started, you had a ten month lease, ten excuse me twelve month lease, the year has expired, now what? You don't have a written agreement anymore that defines whatever the term period is. At that point, a landlord can terminate the agreement on either sixty days or ninety days depending on how long the person has been there. If they've been there for less than or equal to two years, it's sixty days, if they've been there for more than two years, it's ninety days. Ninety days notice from the date you provide the termination. If it's a weekly, if the agreement is you paying on a weekly basis, it's twenty one days. And then you go to, if you sold the property, you sell the property to someone else, they can provide termination of thirty days. And then you go to a written rental agreement, which is in the sub E. And the subsection C, we talked about when there is no written agreement, how much time period is. Well in the subsection E, if there's a written agreement, if you want to terminate at the end of the written agreement, so this isn't just thirty days halfway through, this is you're terminating it at the end of the agreement term, you have to provide thirty days if they've been there for two years or less, and sixty days if it's greater than two years, and if it's weekly, it's seven days. Then you get to a shared occupancy, which is slightly different. So I'm just bringing this up to say, for starters, just in the current statute, this is hard to keep together because you have, is

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: there

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: a written agreement, is there not a written agreement, is it based on non payment of rent, is it based on criminal activity, is it a weekly payment arrangement or a monthly payment arrangement, so I'm just highlighting that I put this here to try to keep you grounded in what section are we talking about and then what is the current sketch.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Do you know these off the top of your head?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: At this point, pretty well. Yes, ma'am.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: To your knowledge, is there anything in any of these that address the economic income level of the tenant?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And by the way, this is where I blew it. If you look at the far right hand column, just so you know or for making a note. For the last two columns, sold property and written rental agreement. For the sold property, I'd make it 90. For the to be less than two years, 60. For the more than two years, 90, which would make it the same as no written rental agreement in the current status.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: We're not going there right now, right? No.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're just going through the current Right, I'm just telling you that's where I made an error.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I have a few questions. This is just the landlord's obligation, right? Like a landlord can put in a rental agreement if you choose to not renew your lease, you have to let me know within thirty days.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You can sure can.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I believe there is a section where the tenant can terminate, may have to provide at least, I believe the phrasing is one rental period's notice. I think conceptually this is most likely to apply to landlords in most instances. Which

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: makes sense. I think my other question is, specifically with the written rental agreement, you have to notify, let's say within thirty days. Is that a written notification of saying, I'm not going to renew your lease?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So that's where all the way back to the

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: beginning and you

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: can hone in on the definition of active lease. That is the statutory term that's used in all of these, you have to provide actual notice which would have to be in writing in some capacity. Current statute, hand delivered or mailed, so it would have to be in writing. Okay.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Even if there is no written rental

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: agreement? Yes, ma'am.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Did you, Elizabeth and then Debbie, did you have something? I remember.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: No, I was just saying, no. Well, I guess I have one more question, which is very spitch point one, which is to your knowledge of other states' laws, right as you're sitting here, I'm not asking you to go look anything up because I can also look exactly, Do you, to your knowledge, do states by and large include income levels in their positions, renewal or non renewal?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I have not done extensive research on that in comparison of termination dates. Anything that I have seen,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: no. Okay, thank you.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Can we talk about the power of a termination notice now?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think we get to that later. Okay,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: again I just wanted to kind of reference the current law which is really going to be dependent on what is the termination for, is there a written rental agreement, and how long has the individual lived there, because just ending on those three primary things is going to dictate what the notice period that you have to provide. Okay, so we're going to take these section by section, subdivision, excuse me, subsection by subsection. Looking at A, so it's the top of page six, this is for termination of non payment of rent. The landlord may terminate a tenancy at non payment of rent by providing actual notice to the tenant on the date at which the tenancy will terminate which shall be at least current statute fourteen days after the date of actual notice. What you have in March and April is keeping that the same, you get to June which is reducing it to three days, then you get to seven seventy two, it's reducing it to seven days. So this is where I tried to highlight some of the things that are different between the bills, but didn't highlight everything. Okay, another key piece here is if you're interested in that subsection, acceptance of partial payment of rent does not constitute a waiver of the landlord's remedies here. So if you're being terminated because of nonpayment of rent and you provide half a month's payment of rent, that doesn't preclude the landlord from continuing to move forward with the termination.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's optional at that point for them, yeah. Correct.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, to the Subdivision 2, excuse me Subdivision B1.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Landlord Did you say B or C1? B.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So this is for breach of a rental agreement, the landlord may terminate a tenancy for failure of the tenant to comply with a material term of a rental agreement or with obligations imposed by providing actual notice given to the tenant at least thirty days prior to the termination date. So what does that mean? What are the material terms filled with the obligations imposed? So material terms of a written agreement could be different things. As we talked earlier, there is no requirement that an agreement be in writing, it can be oral, but there is no requirement it's a truck backing up, there's no requirement that a rental agreement maintain any level of information under current statute. Okay, there are statutory obligations of a tenant. The tenant has to, the tenant cannot create non compliance within the unit of the health and safety codes, they can't destroy the unit, destroy the property, this is all in current statute, not verbatim, but these are sections within the current statute. The tenant cannot disrupt other tenants' peaceful habitation or their peaceful enjoyment of the property, so they have to pay rent obviously, but what that means could also really depend on what's in the rent, but I just want you to know that there are statutory obligations, well what does it mean in material terms and their obligations, well if they're destroying your property

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that alone could suffice into this section. Also, just by way of example for everybody, a lot of leases contain a provision that says no smoking. Correct. And that's not in the statute, but the people who put them in really care about it because it's fire hazard. And so that would be deemed I think that would be deemed a material term.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Can I ask about a bill that is not on here, is in judiciary, been mentioned by the chair, sponsored by Rep? Goodnow. I'm talking about the ability to trespass, not the tenant, but the visitor. Oh, it went there.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, it went there. And a

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: lot of, or I've known in a lot of rental agreements that a landlord may say that you are the only sole person living there, the only tenant. And then a tenant might have somebody start living with them. That is not they'll say longer than seven days

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Could and nobody

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: that be, I guess, a breach.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Although Goodmauvsville is something slightly different.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: It's more like, he's a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: fair ruling. No, we'll get there. If you'll get there, you'll see, we'll get there.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: That's a really important that Ashley raised, though, because that's really important thing that I think a lot of landlords want. Can I just add, so when it's not written, is there already an expectation of, are there other expectations of a tenant's obligations even without a written?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: There can be. It would be harder to prove.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So there's nothing else in our statutes that says just sort of like reasonably like your obligation is to pay rent just like landlords have obligations even with an unwritten?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: If I had a better sense

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: of how are to tenants make obligations? Sure

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: that was written by someone.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Would pull it up. So section 4,455, tenant's obligation to pay rent. Rent is payable without demand or notice at the time and place agreed upon by the parties. That's an obligation of a tenant whether it's in writing or not. Separate from that in the next section you have tenant obligations, says a tenant shall not create or contribute to the non compliance of the dwelling unit with applicable provisions of building housing health regulations. The tenant shall conduct himself or herself and require other persons on the premises with tenants consent to conduct themselves in a manner that will not disturb other tenants peaceful enjoyment. Tenants shall not deliberately or negligently destroy to face damage or remove any part of the premise or fixtures, etc. So and then there's a few other sections, but those obligations apply to a tenant whether you have a written agreement or an oral agreement. Aside from that, you can have additional obligations or material terms of the agreement as the chair mentioned, you may have something in writing that says you can't have other people stay there, you can't smoke in the property or in the unit, those can be orally agreed upon, contracts can be agreed upon orally, but then it just becomes a how do you prove it if you have to go to court and then it becomes a he said she said.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So but that doesn't that still doesn't answer the question about what, recourse a tenant has when the landlord doesn't. Like, a landlord can There are sections agreement, but a tenant might not want to terminate an agreement.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: There are sections about habitability in a tenant's remedies if a landlord is not providing a habitable unit. They can receive damages, they can receive attorney's fees, etcetera. If a I would want to check if that also includes a tenant's remedies against material terms of an agreement.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: An example that I would think of, Elizabeth, would be, for instance, I had a friend who didn't have a working oven for a really long time and didn't really know what to do. It's not, like, laid out in the lease. Right? Like, you will have all your utilities or, like, things like that, and you didn't know what to do, you didn't wanna, like, cause a stir.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I rented a room here in Montpelier from a lady who who, while I was there, never had a working toilet until the last week of the session.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Right, what do you do? So I don't think

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: there is a course, so I looked

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: at the section real quick, there is a section about habitability and tenant remedies. So the tenant can, you know receive damages, reasonable attorney fees, etc, or lack of habitability issues, but it doesn't say anything about material terms. So if you have an agreement where, piggybacking off the smoking comment, if you have an agreement and the landlord lives in the unit and the agreement is no one smokes on the property and the landlord has agreed to that as well and then smokes on the property, what is your remedy? I don't

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: know that you have it. Ashley. Going

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: off with the smoking, let's say you enter into a non written agreement, but the landlord throws up a sign in like a shared common space, let's say, that says no smoking, would that be considered a material part of the agreement?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: If the parties haven't agreed to it, you can't have a unilateral agreement to a contract. But I don't, this is some case law, very advanced scenario that I would want to look at to see if they exist, but I don't want to give you a 100% affirmative yes or no, but that's how I would argue it if I was the tenant, if it's not included in my written agreement or the oral agreement that he had and you just throw up a sign that says you can't do this, I would argue that we haven't agreed to those terms. Okay.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Even if you haven't left the apart.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: You could

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: whether you chose to or not. Okay, I'm bringing this back, we're on page six, we're still under B1 because this is the section currently where it provides the termination period if you fail to comply with your obligations. So then you get to look on the far right under seven seventy two, I guess before I even get there, it's thirty days is the current statute, six sixty eight would reduce it to three days, seven seventy two is gonna reduce it to twenty one days. So then seven seventy two makes an attempt to go in and help further define what are these material terms that can be included under this subdivision. So it says under one, so you can see we're adding a 1B, failure to comply with the material term of the rental agreement or with obligations imposed under this chapter includes repeatedly payment of rent, refusal to allow a landlord or a landlord's agent access to the dwelling unit. Keep in mind there is a separate section that deals with access that I can get into if you have any questions, but for now this is refusal to allow a landlord or a landlord's agent access, which a tenant under current statute must not reasonably withhold. The tenant's refusal to sign a rental agreement renewal or accept reasonable changes to the rental agreement. So you have a twelve month agreement, it's coming up on expiration, the landlord saying, hey, here's some reasonable changes to the rental agreement and the tenants refusing consignment, that would fall under this. And then lastly on the

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: top of page seven, the

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: lower right column, tenants interference with the health and safety of the landlord, landlord's agent, or other residents or neighbors.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I'm so sorry, I have a really quick question. Late payment of rent, is that defined anywhere? Would that be considered, it's due on the first, you pay on the second, that's late, or I'm thinking of your car payment, you have a fifteen Is day grace that information baked into any of the current statute?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: It's not based on anything in the statute.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So would look to what

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: does the rental agreement say? I have rental agreements where it should pay on this day, then I would argue that if you haven't paid on day one, day two it's late. I've seen other agreements that give specified in the agreement that this is a grace period, but it's not defined in the statute. So it would be the day after whatever date has been agreed upon is the date of payment of rent would be late.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Okay, thank you. I just have

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: a question on refusing a lot of the landlord in. I mean, you get forty eight hour notice?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So, well just to jump into that section, so there is a section again, wish I could show this up, but it's section 4,460 about access. It says the landlord may enter the dwelling unit with the tenant's consent, which the tenant shall not unreasonably withhold or it's which shall not That's what fourfour? Fourfoursixty. So it's the tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent, but the landlord can't go in without consent. And then it says that a landlord may go in with forty eight hours notice between the hours of 9AM and 9PM, but only for the following things, When necessary to inspect, to make necessary or agreed upon repairs, have an issue, the landlord's going to come fix it, they can come in to fix it by giving you forty eight hours notice, to supply agreed services and then to show the dwelling unit to prospective buyers. So if it's not within one of those things, showing the unit, supplying services, making a repair, inspecting the premises, if it's not within one of those things, the landlord can't go in unless they have the tenant's permission. So I think that's what's intended to be addressed there is that the tenant continues to refuse to give you permission, if it's not within one of those four, then legally the landlord can't go meet. That's a perceived need to enter if you a landlord could enter. There's, yeah, a landlord, a landlord may only enter the dwelling unit without consent or notice when the landlord has a reasonable belief there's imminent danger to a person or property disease.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I should just clarify that I asked landlord counsel for assistance in drafting and I asked tenant counsel for assistance in drafting. The landlord counsel produced these. It does strike me that given what you just read us, there's sort of a little surplus. In other words, there's provisions on existing law with some of the stuff, and when landlord's counsel appears before us, I intend to ask them why this is necessary, but just to be transparent, some of this comes from counsel on either side.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, to say that differently, you already have a provision about access that a tenant can unreasonably withhold permission to enter, and my question would be, if that currently exists and the tenant's refusing to allow you as a landlord

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to enter,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: why aren't you evicting them under P1 for failure to comply with the obligations under the Like why do you need to switch? You're calling it out here which may be helpful to the public because people may not understand what the obligations are, and so you're adding it here, maybe that's helpful, I don't know.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Thank you for the explanation. Had a situation where a landlord rented his house out to people, family, and neighbors were complaining because they had a couple dogs and they hadn't seen the dogs, and there were cockroaches everywhere. And they would not let the landlord go into each house. I couldn't understand, I mean, he owns the house.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So technically, whether you own the house or not, doesn't matter, right? What I mean by that is every landlord owns the building, right? And so the concept here is it's a, the individual who's renting has their own rights within that dwelling during the period that they're renting. In that scenario, if I'm the landlord and I'm familiar enough with this chapter, I'm giving the person notice that in forty eight hours I'm coming in to inspect it because I've got complaints that there are pests. And part of my obligation as a landlord is to provide you with a unit that is free from pests. That's actually a specific requirement in the rules of the Division of Fire Safety. That's how I would approach it, but I don't know the Well,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: eventually did evict them. It was a dead animal in the basement. Mean it was

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Oh my god. Oh yeah, it was

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: so B1 page six, not complying currently thirty, six sixty eight down to three, seven seventy two down to 21 with further definition of what that means. Now we're moving to page seven looking at period for criminal activity, illegal drug activity, acts of violence. Currently it's fourteen days, six eighty eight changes it to three days, six sixty, six eighty eight, three days, seven fifty six down to seven days and adds in human trafficking, which is a criminal activity. So again, maybe not necessary, but maybe you want to add it to call out seven days and then you get to seven seventy two, which adds some slight tweaks to the language here. So it would be criminal activity, illegal drug activity, acts of violence includes or adding damage to the dwelling unit or premises or other activity, any of which threatens the health or safety of other residents, adding in the landlord or landlord's agent or neighbors. So a very strict reading of B2 now is it has to be criminal activity, illegal drug activity, acts of violence, which threaten the health or safety of other residents. I don't know whether a court has expanded that on their own, but the statutory language at least appears to be limited to other residents. This would say landlord, landlord's agents or neighbors and then it reduces it from fourteen days to three days. Well, this is which one? Seven seventy two all the way in the right. Right.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The the threatens the health and safety of other residents is in all the others. Correct. That's current law. That's correct.

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly Committee Member)]: I'm saying if you

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're adding the landlord or the landlord's agent or neighbor. That is

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: what seven seventy two would do, yes.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right. That's what 772 is added, yes. Does it

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: have to be on premises?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't think so.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So hypothetically,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: reading that, but I'm not aware.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: So I'm thinking of specifically, I don't know why this is the one thing that's popping up in my brain. Years ago there was a shooting at Red Square. It was very clear who perpetrated the shooting first, or who was the perpetrator in that instance. If I'm a landlord and I hear about that, like, and do I have any repercussion of saying?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So the current limitation is the activity has to be against another resident. So if it's not against, if it's against member of the public, I would argue you wouldn't be able to use this.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But it doesn't have to be which threatens the health or safety of other residents. It doesn't have to be I'm

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: not reading a location or a location.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So if someone stood outside and started shooting through windows, that would be covered, if it threatens the health and safety, wherever it is, if it threatens the health and safety of it.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I guess my thought is, as a landlord, would I be able to say, this has happened, can I assume that there could be a threat to my other tenants? Presumed threat. Thank you, presumed threat.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do you mean if a tenant is outside the building? No,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: if a tenant has committed a crime,

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: outside of the

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: building, and then they are still living in the house because they have been arrested but given a court date, so they're back home. Is that your scenario? That was much more eloquent.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: No, no, understand. A landlord can argue it. My understanding of what's going to happen practically. Landlord, whether it's statutorily authorized or not, provides a termination notice based on what they perceive to be activity that meets this definition. Tenant leaves, tenant leaves. Yeah. Tenant stays, you have to go get an ejectment action to remove them from the property. At that point, tenant may argue, I committed a crime that I'm going to be punished for that doesn't threaten any one of the residences of the unit. You can't, this is an illegal eviction. Come out.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Right, but I do what Brett Bartley is saying, if I was a landlord, I may not want someone who shot someone, like, on my property anymore. And then you would have this ejection case where you make your hat?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Based on a strict reading of the statute, I don't see the landlord authorized to do that.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Okay. Think would require due process and

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Yes. Yes.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I think you'd

[Unidentified Speaker (possibly Committee Member)]: have I think your case would be if one tenant was threatening another tenant off premises Yeah. And you both live next to each other, even though it didn't happen on premises, you could make a case that there is now a safety threat against us.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Correct. If somebody is charged with a crime and released on bail, the judge has already made a decision that they're not a threat to themselves or others, or flightless, well, not flight risk. That's true. There has to be a pretty high threshold There for the ability to threat to

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: is, I should add, because there was considerable conversation around this, Hypotheticals aside, one of the concerns was we don't want to punish someone for, let's say, using drugs. Someone smokes or is using drugs in their property and isn't hurting anybody. They're not covered by this. All of this activity has to threaten the health or safety of other residents. So, I was specifically asked by the tenant side, don't recriminalize or, you know, don't add to someone who's just sitting in their unit being a drug addict if they're not the problem. So, and that is in the current law. That's what I found, it's in the current law. But on the other hand, I was asked by the landlord side to deal with situations where someone is just making it clear the person they're threatening is the landlord. Landlords are frightened sometimes, you know, to go in, So that's Thank

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: you. I appreciate the nature of the conversation and also just wanted to bear caution that we are veering off into a jurisdiction that is not ours. And I say that as in as well as if we're gonna talk about people committing crimes, if there's a case of domestic violence, you know, if the perpetrator is living in the home, then, you know, are we keep let's look at our case our caseload right now. And we're putting people and I'm not saying I'm not saying to not. I'm not saying protect perpetrators. That's not what I'm saying. We'll be abundantly clear. What I'm just saying is how do we determine which crimes? This is I just feel like we're doing a little scope creep here in this conversation, because I feel like that's why we have judges and trials and a court system that I don't think that is up to us to legislate. I think our role here is to set healthy parameters around what that looks like. And if we're going to go that far, then I would say to on the side of caution when we're talking about all crimes and situations. Because given, our current situations, as I was stating, and you look at DV, we we have domestic violence as a protected class, especially when it comes to housing, in protecting victims. Right? And so but oftentimes having perpetrators removed from the home is a problem. So if we're going to address that, I would love for us to put in very clear language on how to remove perpetrators of violence. And let's be very clear on what that looks like and what that means if we're gonna set that precedent and statute. But if not, I just wanna on the side of caution as there's just a lot of parameters at play. And similarly with I I have a lot of concerns with the language around, from July in the human trafficking language and what that requires and what that means. There's a lot of law enforcement, there's not a lot of victim services or protections for the survivors and people who have are being trafficked. I don't see the protections in place, and I don't think that the conversation, based on the language, has read around, what that does to the psyche and the mental health. So I just want us to just stay in our our lane a little bit around landlord protections, landlord, tenants and that conversation, and let's let our other branches of government engage in their roles in the ways that they should. That's just my two cents. Thank you. So I'll read your pontificate.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Debbie,

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Even though this is not law about criminal activity and infantile drug activity, etcetera, I find to take a case to court is very hard to prove without having, for example, like the police report, like let's say they did a drug bust in your apartment and you're like, well, now I need my police report. You can't use newspaper articles, you can't use hearsay, you can't use all that. So to actually enforce this, I think is very difficult without a police report and the police may have an ongoing investigation, you're not gonna be getting a report.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's exactly the issue which will see dealt with later on. That was helpful. Yeah, That another is a real issue, and it's one of the major issues that was brought to my attention as I drafted this, that we have to find a way to deal with trafficking, that means drug dealing, etcetera, where all the other tenets are terrified and won't ever testify against it. You will see and we'll discuss it, our attempt to deal with that.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, great points all around. Keep in mind what we're talking about right now is just the termination, what its termination is being provided for and what is the period there. We will get into when you're talking about what do you do if the person doesn't leave then you bring an ejectment and how do

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: you prove as the chair mentioned will get stopped. But we don't get to ejectment until we've already satisfied this year.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: You must terminate somebody before you can then go eject them. Must terminate the agreement. Permanate the agreements and then the statute in the residential rental agreement chapter says if the individual stays beyond the date that you have set for the termination of the rental agreement, you then bring an objectment action against them to get a writ of possession for the property, so then you can have ultimately if you get that writ, you're gonna have a sheriff deliver it and remove the individual.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: If you don't have enough evidentiary material to terminate the agreement, you're not going have enough to be there.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So this is a little foreshadowing, keep in mind for what we're just talking about on the page, this is a landlord providing notice. There is no standard, there's no evidentiary standard that a landlord needs to do this, where they're going to have an issue is if you provide the termination and you're saying it's based off criminal activity that I suspect you of doing and then you stay, now I have to go to court to get that objectment action and I'm telling the court I'm basing this termination on the fact that you're doing criminal activity, well now I need to prove that to the court.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: In other words, there's nothing at all to stop a landlord from giving any of these notices as provided here. The proof whole thing comes, we're going to get it.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Just a quick question. Is there anything in our current statute that prevents nuisance, landlord nuisance violence?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: There are, I don't know what you

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: mean by nuisance violence. If there are remedies for a tenant, a landlord is proceeding with an illegal

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: eviction. No, she means like, can the landlord say, isn't our state nuisance statute? Are there things that would apply to the landlordtenant situation where the landlord forget about all the Like, standards in this

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: when a tenant has to take time from work to be able to respond to whatever complaints a landlord has about a tenant, which could in turn affect their ability to pay their rent because they haven't and and so forth. Are are there any kinds of just like when a we do have nuisance statutes, I think, that that address stalking and other situations where a person a citizen has to respond over and over again because a complaint or whatever paperwork gets filed over and over again, whether or not that complaint or whatever paperwork is valid, its purpose is still to the purpose of the filing is not to try to get the tenant out in this, but it is actually to create a nuisance create a nuisance for the tenant that the tenant has to respond to, which could affect their ability to remain successful. Like bad faith filing. That's a

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: rash thing.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Filing in bad faith.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Bad faith filing. There's nothing in this chapter.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: There are, in our civil code, I imagine, preventants that deal with harass, using litigation to harass.

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Right, that was why, exactly why I was asking whether there is such a thing for I don't think so.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, so I'm going to bring us back to page seven halfway through on the Subdivision 2, we've been talking about the ejectment period for criminal activity, drug activity, etcetera. You have the changes there highlighted. The only thing we didn't speak about is in 772, so on the right there the Subdivision 3 is what's included here. As you can see it's a reduction for the notice period down to three days based on one of these activities of the tenant. It does require that the actual notice shall be accompanied by an affidavit setting forth particular facts and support the termination You

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: will see in a while, whenever we get to it, that the reason for this written affidavit under penalty of perjury is that later on during the injectment process, at that point, it's up, the burden of proof changes and the tenant has to submit facts or an affidavit that contradict it, and if they don't, they're gone.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Now we are moving to the bottom of page seven. Here's where we get into termination for no cause in the absence of a written rental agreement. So there is no agreement in written agreement in place. Current law is, as I mentioned, if you go back to this cheat sheet here, there's a lot of language that's on this statutory section. But at the end of the day it is if the individual has been there for two years or less you have to provide them with sixty days notice. There's no written agreement so it's sixty days from the date that you provide that notice. If they've been there for greater than two years, it's ninety days and if they're there weekly, it's twenty one, if they're paying weekly, it's twenty one days. So that's the current statute. Here's where each of these sections, excuse me, each of these bills really starts to deviate from each other in pretty significant ways. I'll start by saying $3.99 and $4.40 make an attempt to get rid of the concepts of a no cause eviction. So a no cause eviction is simply, you don't have a written agreement, here's your notice period, sixty or ninety days, agreement ends, you gotta go. There is a written agreement later on, it's a notice period before that term ends. So your twelve month lease is set to expire at the end of the month and I'm going to give you a notice that meets the requirements of the section that we're not renewing the lease. So at the end of the lease, the rental agreements up, you got to go. As I said, 03/9440 specify in language that the conclusion of a rental agreement in writing isn't cause and so they're kind of overall broad concept is getting rid of no cause evictions. If you're going to evict someone you have to meet specific statutory criteria. Now they go about this, three ninety nine and four forty go about this in different ways and so what you'll see here is going from pages eight all the way down through page 13, you will see three ninety nine and four forty doing this in slightly different ways. And so that's where all that red comes in where I'm saying see above, see above because there are similar provisions in these two bills that don't line up exactly, okay. So I'm going to start with four forty and I'm just going to quickly walk through this. So if you all will indulge me, I'm just going to walk through. I'm going tell you what it does and then we can talk about it. So four forty subsection C, termination for no cause, removing a lot of language. Landlords shall not terminate the tenancy unless authorized by this section. What four forty is doing in sub C is it's trying to clean it up and say these are the only ways you can terminate someone. Under the A on page A, top of page A, third column, non payment of rent in accordance with A. B, breach of rental agreement in accordance with B, for no cause in accordance with this section, when the property is sold in accordance with D, for a shared occupancy in accordance with H. So it's just saying corresponding to each of these things, these are the reasons you can turn them. Moving to the bottom of page eight sub two, a landlord may terminate a tenancy for no cause only in the following circumstances: the rental unit is of a two unit or three unit owner occupied building, or the rental unit requires renovations that exceed 50% of the rental unit's value. Sub C under page nine, if the landlord or a member of the landlord's immediate family has a good faith intention to occupy the premises. D, if the tenant refuses to accept reasonable good faith renewal terms when proposed in writing with a reasonable opportunity for the tenant to review and accept those terms. So four forty is saying you can't terminate someone for no cause unless it meets one of those four criteria.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Wait.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Two unit, three unit owner occupied building, rental unit has renovations, landlord, member of the landlord's immediate family has to come in, or the tenant refuses to accept reasonable terms. Expiration of an agreement is not cause, it's under three under page nine. Moving to page four, in the event the landlord terminates the tenancy for no cause the landlord shall provide three months notice and reasonable relocation expenses. Few other quick exceptions, because I'm on nine, moving to sub five, the subsection shall not apply to the first six months of the tenant's occupancy under a residential rental agreement. If terminating under the first six months, a landlord shall provide actual notice, which shall be thirty days. Then when you get to the top of page 10, you have the definition of immediate payment, which is the same definition as in Zen seven seventy two. So going back to this little cheat sheet here for four forty, getting rid of the whole concept of the difference between is there a written rental agreement under C, is there a written rental agreement under fee, as you can see in the column of four forty here removed no cause termination, removed no cause termination. Those have been removed. You can only terminate a tenancy, you still got if the person's not paying rent under A, you still have if they're breaching the material terms or doing criminal activity under B. Outside of those things, it's limited to the language on the bottom of page eight and the top of page nine. Two or three unit members are occupied, needs renovations, family members moving in, tenant refuses to accept the reasonable terms, or if it's sub five there at the bottom there's a first six months kind of period grace, I don't want call it grace period, period of the first six months where a landlord can terminate somebody within the first six months, and that wouldn't run afoul of that section. Is that like a probationary period when you start employment, just like for my brain?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, it probably comes from the testimony of Debbie's husband. I do want to clarify one thing, my own take on this. This is my opinion. One of the weird things that I don't understand about this statute as it is now, is that termination because the lease is over, termination because you want to move your, the landlord wants to move their family in, termination because you're going to remodel the It's called no cause, and I don't think it's no cause. It's just a form of cause, and so in July, it's all there, it's all the same, it's just called what it is, repurposing the unit, etcetera, it's just named for what it is, not called no cause, but that's just labeling. The major difference is that four forty contains some really important terms, which are not in July. Four forty says, if you enter into a 12 lease expiration is you can't terminate lease. That is a big difference. I'm not characterizing it as good or bad. So if I enter into a twelve month lease, and I keep paying my rent, I can stay forever.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: As long as you

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: pay your rent I pay your rent and we could and we could, the landlord cut up the rent, but I as long as I keep paying, I'm there. It might be a twelve month contract, but it goes off. One difference. Second is, if I guess, the second, in my view, really important difference is that the landlord who terminates for no cause has to pay relocation. It has to it terminates for these reasons, that, you know, these different reasons has to pay relocation expenses, which by the way I've done it, I know because I've done it, is the case under federal law. When you have a unit that's subsidized, you have to put aside money to relocate tenants if you terminate them for no cause, but for these reasons. So, that's four forty is very different, and I'm not sure about three ninety nine, you can explain, you're about to go through that, but

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I just wanna point out those major differences. The labeling is not so important. The relocation expenses, would that be even in the case of for cause or? No. So just the

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Just under those circumstances. So when you look at boards, in the event a landlord terminates a tenancy for no cause under this subsection. Sorry, okay, thank No, that's okay, that's the question. So it's just for, because if you look back earlier in April we're removing the distinction and later you're removing this whole difference between have you been there for less than two years, have you been there for greater than two years, it removes all of those timeframes. So now if it's no cause which is only available for these few things, the notice period is now three months. So a significant increase and that would require relocation expenses, but only for these, not for other terminations. Okay, Saudia.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Thank you. Yeah. So I just wanted to just also clarify as well. Not it's not not for, you know, anything, so damages or anything like that. But also the six month period, I think people miss the fact. And yes, I know the advocates are going to come from my head on this. But, you know, we've heard testimony historically about, you know, the extended period of time that people go. And the reason why we put the the six month grace period in there, where that if it's before six months, then no cause is you know, if it's not a good fit, if the landlord is like, you know, we we I think we heard testimony last week where they said, oh, if it's you know, the the landlord doesn't feel safe, they feel, you know, they feel un you know, or anything like that, but there's no other reason and it's not a good fit, they have to give notice. Yes. Reasonable notice. And also within that first six months, if it's not a good fit, then, you know, the people sign the lease knowing that that is the expectation and that that is a possibility. But then after the six months, that is when it becomes, you know, the the lease agreement. And then also, I think in the end, it's after the twelve months, it's not that the landlord can't evict them. It's just that they have to require the written notice, which is the same notice. Is that correct, Cameron? Am I correct in articulating the end of the twelve month? Did we do that right?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: No, ma'am. I think we talked about that, but the current draft language that you have in April is you would be able to evict somebody if they are not paying or they're doing criminal activity, but expiration of the agreement would not be caused. So at the end of the twelve months, they would just go from month to month unless what you did add in was if the individual refused to agree to reasonable terms.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: That's right.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. Yes.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Thank you. I'm like, know I thought we put another caveat.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Okay.

[Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Okay. So I just wanted to make sure that it was aware that there is another caveat in there. For the applicant.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: So if the term ends and the landlord is looking to sign another lease with the individual, which was not agreeing to reasonable terms or changes to that, that could be a reason for it, John.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I mean, one way of keeping this straight in your head, this is a really interesting comparison, because it helps us sort of keep in mind a pretty pro tenant version versus kind of one that's not so. This version, and I'm really not criticizing it in any way, this version is saying current law and this version and seven seventy two are all the same, and that basically you can terminate because you wanna use the property for something else, you can terminate because you're gonna use it, etcetera, all of that's the same. What's different is under four forty, before six months, you can terminate for any reason you want to. You don't like the person. But after six months, they're there. You cannot terminate unless there is one of these reasons I just mentioned. So, as long as they're paying rent, if you're not going to repurpose it for some other use, you're not going etcetera, you're just stuck with them and they're stuck with you. And if you do want to terminate one of the reasons that are common, you know, you want to use it for your family, you want to use it for some other reason, etcetera, you have to relocate. Great, I'm

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: gonna just point out that the provision for relocation helps with stability, but it doesn't help with affordability. Right. Because if it needs to be collected, it'll be collected, it'll be built into

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the Yeah, you have to build it. What you do is, as I know, because I've been the East Callis Community Trust was a nonprofit landlord, and we have a reserve which we have to fill up that allows us to pay for relocation. Is there a cap on how much relocation

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: costs are

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: There is, I don't know what it is.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: The equivalent of one month's rent under the rental agreement terms, or the waiving of the final month's rent, which a

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: month. Yeah, which is, by the

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: way, less than 10 below. Would that be applicable to section 4B, back half? 4B,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: where are they?

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: Sorry, for four forty, where it says reasonable relocation expenses, would that half be applicable?

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: It would be applicable at

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: $4.40. Yeah, okay, thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, I'm going jump.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: One of the reasons that we've heard about not wanting to landlords not wanting to renew a lease from the tenant side, we've heard

[Unidentified Speaker]: they wanted to get a new tenant in who would pay more than I could afford.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: And so they just didn't renew it. Is there anything on the books to affirmatively allow that or prohibit it? Or is there a cap on rent raises for the same tenancy renewing a new contract, the same tenant or a new

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: There's currently no cap on rent increases in

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: step two. Nor on the frequency of rent increase. There's

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: just a notice period you have to give them. I think it's like sixty days notice before you raise rent. Many of these bills have proposed language for a rent cap. So for example, you have four forty, later on in the bill there is a cap on rent proposed. And under current law, just to

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: be clear, there is no cap on rent, there is no limitation on the frequency of rent increases, and there is no limitation. If you have a twelve month lease, and let's say a landlord just doesn't like the tenant, or a landlord finds that the tenant commits a whole bunch of small infractions that really don't obviously add up to something that they could, you know, their kids bully all the other kids, you know, they're just a pain. The solution right now is they just wait to lease out and non renew. So, that's, in other words, it is definitely, it's one of those things, the ability to non renew, it's one of those things that could be abused by the landlord or be really useful for the landlord. It's just a fact of life, period. They could decide they want to non renew because they can get more rent. They could decide they can non renew because they really, the tenant makes them feel unsafe. That's the status quo right now.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, I'm going to get you back to the $3.99, so we kind of walked through some of the changes on four forty, Now on three ninety nine, let's go all the way back to page eight. Three ninety nine is going to take a similar approach to four forty in that it removes most no cause evictions or terminations and it states that the end of a written lease agreement shall not constitute cause. But it does this in different ways than four forty. So whereas four forty does a lot of cleanup of funds in sub C and then it says here are the reasons that meet the definition of no cause, three ninety nine goes about it in this manner. It keeps the, feel free to reference to your cheat sheet here, for the no written rental agreement under its sub C, it keeps the time periods of sixty, ninety, and twenty one days but it says if there's no agreement you can only terminate, now we're on three, the bottom of page eight, if it is because it's a rental unit of a two forty three unit owner occupied building or the rental unit requires renovations that exceed 50%. So those provisions are similar in that four forty has that those two circumstances as justification for no cause. Three ninety nine says if you have no agreement then you can only terminate for those reasons. Now we're going to go past page nine because you see all this red we're referencing similar sections. We're going to go all the way down to page 11 subsection e so we just talked about if there isn't a rental agreement, now we're going to talk about if there is a written rental agreement, and it says that similarly you cannot terminate for no cause unless it is a rental unit of a two or three unit owner occupied building or the rental unit requires renovations. But it keeps all of those termination dates the same whereas four forty gets rid of them and goes with one period of three months. Now look at page 12, under three ninety nine it says these are the only reasons for no cause outside of a two to three unit owner occupied building or for need for renovations. So it says the landlord shall not terminate a tenancy without cause. Sub B there on page 12 expiration of a rental agreement is not pause. And then you have a landlord may terminate a tenancy if allowed within the first three months. So that's why that's orange is because that's different than April, April was the first six months. This is the first three months if it's allowed by the agreement. So it would have to be in writing which keep in mind March had that provision way up at

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the top that required them to be

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: in writing if it was four months or longer. And then three, going back to page twelve, three landlord may terminate a tenancy seat for a landlord or a member of the landlord's immediate family as a good faith retention to occupy. And then under those circumstances, it has to be a six months notice. No relocation expenses, but instead of three months, which is $4.40, it's six months and $3.99. And then you have the same definition of family member and then if you go to page 13 at the end subsection six, there's a section here that talks about state or municipal government or that requires the tenant to leave. That's similar there's a similar provision in Exod 72 which is why I put a red note all the way over on the far right column. So let me just back up for a second, I'm happy to jump into a question again I've a question here. I prepped you all before lunch, These two bills are essentially trying to accomplish similar things, going about them in a different way. The primary thing is they're getting rid of this concept that termination of the rental agreement is cause to terminate, removes that for both of them and then narrows the reasons why you could separate if it's not for cause. It gives different periods of notice, three ninety nine keeps a lot of the current notice period structure, four forty gets rid of all of it and goes with a flat three months.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: If I'm a tenant, I have a twelve month lease, and in my eighth month, I decide I'm moving to Alaska,

[Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: and

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I just say, Hey landlord, I'm moving to Alaska. I'm moving out tomorrow. What is my obligation as that tenant to the landlord? And in the essence of notification, do I have to pay till the end of the twelve months? What does that look like? So I want to do a

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: little research and come back to you on that. The statute as I read it, I haven't done case law research on that question. I can just tell you what I've read in the statute. The statute says that a tenant has to provide one rental periods termination. There's a separate section that talks about when a tenant abandons the property and it says that a tenant has to continue to pay rent for the period that they've abandoned unless the landlord gets a new tenant. What I don't know is if the case law has distinguished between those two things. My experience is that when you're a tenant, you owe, on the tenant side, you owe for the lease. Okay. For the landlord side, they have to mitigate, which means the landlord can't, let's

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: say you need to move after six months, the landlord can't say, well, you owe me the other six months and just sit there, they have to make a reasonable effort to rent, and if they do, to deduct that. But when you sign a lease, it's payable monthly, but you owe the whole thing. Now whether Vermont is different than most other areas, I don't know.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I think that's a good way of thinking about it, it's not written in those terms, and then you also have the practical question. We do have You're going to Alaska and I'm a landlord, am I going to go after you to get four months

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: worth Yeah, of we have an issue here which we have to figure out as a committee how to deal with. We have floor in fifteen minutes and we have managed to get through about half of the first of the two tones. So, one thing I would recommend is that maybe we just go for another ten minutes at most.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: I can finish this lecture at least.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And try to go somewhat higher level with the understanding that we can go deeper with this master book side by side. But I do think, you know, continuing the discussion that you just went through for six eighty eight, seven fifty six, etcetera, seven seventy two, in terms of the basic differences.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, I can be super high level and get us probably to page 15. So when looking at six sixty eight, let's go back to page seven, bottom of page seven, so we've dealt with non payment of sub K, we've dealt with criminal activity and obligations in sub B, we're on sub C, absence of a written rental agreement, what six eighty eight is going to do when you move to the top of page eight, you go back you know you refer back to your cheat sheet there's a different time period for this depending on how long the tenant has been there two years or less or greater than two years, What six eighty eight does is it removes that distinction and it just makes it sixty days. So if you're no written agreement, sixty days regardless of how long you've lived there, if you're monthly. Then under two if you're weekly, it's down to three days, twenty one to three. Similarly,

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: when you

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: go all the way down to

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: E,

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: there's a similar change here where it goes down to thirty days, so you have a written agreement that goes down to thirty days and if it's week to week it's down to three days, okay. So just keeping the same structure, just making it one day and short.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So different notice requirements, no relocation, Yes. And you can terminate at the end of the lease.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: Correct. Keeps the current structure

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: as That's what I mean by high level. Yes. Okay.

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: $7.56, there's no change. So it's just keeping the current structure as it is. Then we get to 772. Seven seventy two gets rid of the distinction of whether something is in writing or not in writing and it makes them just kind of more structural organization changes. So looking at the bottom of page seven, it takes subsection C because it's currently about if there is no written agreement and it says this is about tenant when the tenant provides notice or the government requires notice to vacate and at that point it's on the date that's required. If the tenant gives you notice, it terminates when the tenant gave you notice. If the government gives you an order that the tenant must vacate, it terminates when the order says the tenant vacates. Then you get to on page, D on page 10, it adds some provisions when the, so this is currently when the property is sold, there's no changes across the board for when the property is sold but seven seventy two takes the opportunity to add in or if the property is being repurposed. So if the landlord contracts to sell the building, good faith intention for the landlord or member of the landlord's family to use the building similar to what's in the ninety nine and four forty same definition. Permanently withdraw the dwelling unit from the rental market intends to demolish the unit in these circumstances there has to be a thirty day sentence. Yeah, and I want it to be 90, I just blew it and the only difference I will highlight or mention is that highlighted orange statement, so the difference is seven seventy two requires that if the landlord's going to move in or the immediate family's going to get it needs to be like in previous months, the other bills won't specify the timeframe And then the last piece I'll mention is the E on page 11 where it gets rid of the distinction if there is no written agreement or if there is a written agreement that consolidates them, it does keep the distinction if you've been there for two years or greater than two years and Mr. Chairman my understanding is you wanted to go with sixty and ninety days not every sixty days. So that's termination, there's some slight changes for shared occupancy, six eighty eight reduces it, seven seventy two makes it consistent, So if you're looking at the bottom of page 13, so this is when you terminate the shared occupancy. So separate from what we've been talking about earlier, this is where somebody lives in a house with another individual. Currently it's fifteen days if it's monthly, seven days if it's weekly, $6.88 would reduce that to three days if it's weekly, fifteen days keeps fifteen, three days weekly, then seven seventy two on the top of page 14 makes it seven days for both, consolidates them up to one day to one day. That's the termination dates. There's a few other provisions that we can talk about starting on page 15 that are important, but that's probably a good start.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think we will just have to make time a continuation of this, and we'll just rearrange our schedule accordingly. I think that tomorrow, whatever it is, we're going to work on this, but tomorrow, Thursday, let's start at nine. Just be here and be ready by nine. Whether it's our esteemed council is continuing or what you know, whatever it is, we'll just have to make adjustments, which we will, because of your enthusiasm for the issues being raised by the side by side. I can spend all morning with you. This committee has an insatiable curiosity. Which is wonderful. Two quick things I want to say, hope this is helpful. I know it has

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: been extremely difficult to do compare some of these things. I will make a comment for myself. I spent a significant amount of time making sure all of these sections lined up together and then right when I print it for you all they see now decide to shift around a little bit so I might spend a little time tweaking that, but I won't send you all off new copies. Okay, I'm going to pass this out. This is the object pieces that we talked about. I will hold it just that way, you're not dealing with another side by side and no distraction. But we will have to get to this as you're

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I can just say for the at the 60,000 foot level, the sort of more tenant oriented options, as you saw, contained relocation. They don't consider lease expiration a grounds for termination of lease, and they don't make changes, as you will see really in much change in the current law about how fast things go, once ejectment begins. Some of the more landlord oriented ones, I mean, I hate to put it that way, but I can't think of any other way to do it, concentrate on trying to shorten the whole ejectment process, and seven seventy two also does, but not as short, and that's pretty much what you're gonna see. You know, you're gonna see kind of wading into the ejectment process, but basically variations on how long, how short, etcetera. And also, seven seventy two contains in it a very specific process to deal with the allegations having to do with violent or dangerous tenants, or you know, or endangering the health and safety, which we'll get to. You know, will it work? Who knows? Okay? Good. So, 09:00 everybody, and thank you, really, to counsel for a great job. Just want to

[Cameron Wood (Legislative Counsel)]: make sure that I've met the expectations of the vice chair.

[Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I know, you've seen it. My nerdy heart is loving this and has far surpassed any expectations.