Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Welcome

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: back everybody to House Committee on General and Housing. It is almost lunchtime on Thursday, 03/26/2026, and we have an amendment which has just recently been introduced by a proposed amendment to H-seven 72 that has been introduced by Representative Stevens who has joined us, and so we're going to listen to representative Stevens, have a brief discussion, hopefully hear from the Ledge Council, and do a straw poll if we can.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Tom, take it away. You represent Tom Stevens from Waterbury. Thank you for hearing this amendment. This amendment, you've heard it from me already this year. This is essentially the first part of the second part of this is actually H74 which was to extend the tenant representation program that we started in starting in 2023.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: We created the structure for it, funded it in 2024, so we funded the board and it had two years of funding at the time which will expire sometime this fall and the program has been very successful from the number of tenants that Big Land has been able to reach in the two counties that were in the pilot program, Memorial and Windsor County, they were able to cure the evictions of close to 50% of the people that they worked with, which is pretty astounding rate given the tenseness and the tension between landlords and tenants.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, tell us a little more cure, what do

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: you mean? Seventy percent of all evictions are based on lack of payment. Right. And so we worked for years to try to make sure that we could try a program where tenants were actually allowed to have legal representation because in others in other programs like this across the country, when two lawyers could sit together, they could probably hash out the differences much easier than if the property owners had.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So they settled, somehow they settled.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: Yeah, they made an agreement and many more people were kept into their homes than was expected. So I came in earlier this year with seven zero four and this bill basically just would cut the words in Elmoille or Windsor County in order to make it a statewide program. There's no request for extra funding in that bill. First part of the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Can I interrupt super quick? Can you just confirm that prior to this pilot tenants have always been allowed to have representation, it's just the matter of being able to pay for it, Correct? I mean, no one's ever disallowed a tenant from having representation in an eviction process. Am I wrong? No,

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: they haven't been able to afford it, which is synonymous to being able to pay for it, but they have not been able

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to afford But no one's been disallowed.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: It wasn't illegal. Okay, I just, when we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: use allowed, I want to make sure I understand.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But this was funded, am I right that this, I'm just trying to understand, Legal aid has certain funding sources aside from this, and can, although it doesn't have enough money, it can represent anybody with these other funding sources, but my understanding is the value of this pilot was it came with money and it allowed legal aid to have additional resources to represent more people in these two counties. Am I right?

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: No, not exactly.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Help me out.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: This was specifically on the funds that were appropriated to this program or appropriated specifically to the tenant representation program where we're trying to encourage the use of attorneys for tenants to work with property owners in order to settle their differences. There are in the many different categories that legal aid receives money, there's pretty thick walls between what can be used. Legal aid received a lot of money from the federal government during with COVID relief money that has expired that didn't even quite get to this point of actually providing programs. There have been days where legal aid has set up into certain county courts to where they might help tenants at the very beginning, but most tenants represent themselves pro sect, which they do it because So they do this was, again, existing programs show that when most of the eviction proceedings are filed over lack of payment of rent, that having representation is beneficial to keeping tenants in their homes and landlords, property owners whole. And like I said, it's 50% roughly in the title program, at least as of last fall.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, Debbie? I just have a question about the program,

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: because I believe that landlords also represent themselves, that they may not have the money to hire a lawyer if you look at the prices that the lawyers charge today. Has it ever happened going through this process or in this pilot program that it ended up where the tenant was allowed to stay in the property in the home and the landlord get no rent?

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: You would have to ask legal aid that question. I'm not privy to those kinds of court feelings, the programs that exist. This is different than I think a straightforward proceeding. This is about representing people early enough in the process so that they don't have to go through the stays that might keep tenants in those homes. There have been tenant mediation programs, and as it's mentioned in this bill, it's mentioned in the original language, of varying success where landlords and tenants could try to mediate their differences, but it's up to, you know, we know that over 75% of all property owners are represented in court by attorneys, and less than 25 of the tenants are represented by attorneys. Tom, just for clarity, and then we can have questions for clarity, to sort of get to it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What's the value of this without any money? Is there value? First of all, of course there is.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: Yeah. Of course there's value in this that it exists. And that when we voted this in and it became law, it was a framework. It wasn't funded in its first year, and it was funded in the second year, and it was funded for two years. So it's able to receive funds when there's funds available, it's simply having this as a silo where the broad legal aid can work in if they receive funding that can be made specific to this, whether it's private investment, which they don't get a lot of, but they do work with the bar association on different fundraisers. There are ways of raising money for this program that are distinct from just receiving these funds because this bill didn't come forward, we didn't have it in our appropriations committee to continue the funding and they when they asked me to bring this bill forward they reported that they had enough funding for their services in this because this gets tied into whatever rental arrears programs already exist the one that we're funding in July and it is, this is for their time and they feel they felt like they could, they first asked if they could, without this change, represent clients in other parts of the state, but because this program was tied into these two counties, they could not.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So that's what I heard from Andrea. I know we've got a lot of questions, I'm just trying to clarify two things here, Give me a minute. I heard from Andrea that even without my there are the resources between now and maybe the late fall or something. There are still resources in legal aid to be able to represent people outside of these two counties.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: If the funding that they related to me was the funding that we had originally given to this program that was limited to these two counties. If we removed the two counties, then they could spend that money elsewhere.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, okay. Last question, and then I will open it up to a myriad of questions. Though remember you're talking about your own lunch, everybody. Okay, would you object if we made two changes, and I'm not representing the committee, I'm just checking, would you object if we made two changes? One is So first of all, section one

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: Which we didn't talk about yet.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. Tell us about that, the security deposit.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: That's the security deposit transition period. That is Oh, that's about the bulk of the bill.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's about people who Well, I'll

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: talk to Cameron Cameron

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Cameron, you wanna go on up and just sit? There's another chair.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: As I mentioned yesterday, changes that are proposed in this bill are pretty significant for both landlords and tenants, and I don't believe that any of the organizations that would have to be on top of the changes here will be able to implement them by 07/01/2026. I just was asking for those changes to be delayed until 2027.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's just the Council, go ahead.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Council)]: For the record Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Council. What does this do? You'll see later on there's an instance of amendment that changes the effective dates and it makes as the sponsor, the amendment was referring there, it makes the majority of the bill effective 07/01/2027. One of the sections, there is this transition period session law language because you're capping the security deposits that a landlord can charge and that section says that if the landlord has received a security deposit greater than what is now being capped in the statute, if it was received prior to 07/01/2026, the landlord can maintain that security deposit during the rental agreement period. So because the amendment would extend the effective date of the security deposit cap out to 2027, you need to move that date to correspond to, you don't have to, but you could move that date to correspond to the effective date of the section. So it's just in line with moving the effective date out to

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: '27.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: In other words, but this amendment, in addition to this pilot program, would change the effective date of the whole bill effectively?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Council)]: Most of it. The pilot, the representation pilot program would go into effect on passage because you would want that change to be effective immediately, and then the credit reporting pilot program and the CBOEO training for landlords and training education, you know working with landlords and tenants, those two sections would go into effect 07/01/2026 is what you have in your underlying bill. Keep in mind those two programs are contingent effective upon receiving funding and there's no funding in the bill, but they're there in case funding is added on the Senate or through the conference committee with the budget. So those two go into effect July 1, which is part of your underlying bill that came out of committee. But the rest of the bill, the changes to Title IX, residential rental agreements, the changes in the court procedure, etcetera. The amendment proposes to extend the effective date out to 07/01/2027 for all of those provisions. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Counsel, would you tell us what section just towards the end of just before effective dates, section 10 B tenant represent tenant program grant update. What does that mean?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Council)]: So as the sponsor of the amendment was reporting there, the pilot program I believe was initially passed in 2024. 2023, yes. It was initially passed, but the year that it was passed, it wasn't funded. It wasn't funded until the following year. So when you look at the grant documents between legal aid and the agency. They don't necessarily align with the dates that were in the session law because it wasn't funded till a year later. So they've kind of extended out some of the funding in the grant documents. So the point being, we've extended out the reporting period in subsection E on page two. I've just drafted the amendment to allow legal aid to provide this representation throughout the state, not limited to the two counties, that was the primary purpose, but because it wasn't funded until a year after the session law went into effect, I've just extended out the dates to coincide with that fact. And so then because the grant documents, because the program is limited to these two counties, the section 10B there on the bottom of page three is directing the agency of human services and legal aid to update their grant documents if they have them. Cause the money's going through the agency to legal aid. So if they have documents that are now in conflict with what you're changing the session law section of the state, they need to update those documents. So it's just directing them to do so.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Alright. So this is an amendment then which has essentially two thrusts. One is that it extends the pilot program geographically for the rest of Vermont and extends its time frame without any funding, therefore. Two, it delays the implementation of our underlying seven seventy two by a year. So, questions of the committee of our witnesses, and then we'll discuss it. Yes? I'd like

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to go back to the tenant representation pilot program again, and just remind me, is there an avenue where a tenant through this program could have representation but a landlord wouldn't?

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: This is a tenant representation program through this program and it's based on only eviction processes and you have to have, and page two will tell you exactly what the criteria were for the tenants who are available to qualify for this representation. This is not a landlord representation program.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But we agreed that having two attorneys together are better than one not being represented, correct? You had said that earlier. Sure.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think the answer is yes, it could occur.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But it would also be the landlord's choice, not if they're not getting paid.

[Deborah "Debbie" Dolgin (Member)]: Saying to represent themselves.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It's their choice. They're not getting paid.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: So 30% of them don't. 30% of their boyfriends don't get the attorney.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Some of them presumably choose to The number is closer to 80%

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: That do not. That, no, the number is closer to 80% of all property owners are represented in court by attorneys. Okay, so 20% of them are not. They choose not to.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is it always a choice to represent themselves or do we have single unit, very small landowners who do not have and certainly are not earning enough off one or two departments, dire an attorney? Do we have situations that we address where that is the case?

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: I would direct that question if you have legal aid here behind me to ask them what the status of eviction court processes are. My experience is that the, again, the court process from the very beginning to the end, think you've likely received testimony that an eviction process can range between $7,500 and $10,000 if it goes from beginning to end and takes months to do it, Whereas when you have a rental reared program and you have a representation program where differences are being worked out, that the landlord or the lenders are receiving back rent more often than not, and that the cost of the program, including back rent, have been averaging less than even legally from $4,000 Is that okay? So it saves time and it saves money and it gets, you know, back before COVID when this program was just talked about, if you haven't read the Eviction in Vermont program of study from 2019 by Legal Aid and by Landlord Association, you'll find that what was really nice about the testimony that we received on those programs was that both sides agreed landlords want to get paid and tenants want to stay in their homes. This was a program that geared, that aimed to do that, to make it less onerous on both the landlords and the tenants to go through court processes, and programs are meant to avoid court altogether. I'll tell

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: you what I'm thinking I'm gonna do. How many people still have questions? One. We haven't I am actually concerned about asking the committee to sit through what looks like about six hours of floor without lunch. I mean, really. So I have a choice. I can either call the question after, right now, or have a discussion, and call the question now, or I can cut it off after questions are over, everyone can think about it, and when the amendment comes on the floor, we'll just come back and have our vote. So, why don't people have a preference? I really would like people to have a chance to eat. I'm sorry to be such a mother, but Wait, it's

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you don't blame it on a mother.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Look, in my family, I believe in food.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you for caring about

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: us. I care. So, question? I would, in any case, complete the question.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: My only question is, of the cases that might come up in a year, what percentage do you think would actually be covered if we change the language, if we adopted this type of amendment? How many tenants do you think would end up with representation?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: data, again, the folks from The UK, people that will have more statewide data, the data on this program as of last August, which is the last information I have, showed that they reached out to over 150 tenants who were in this position of receiving an eviction notice and approximately half of them agreed to join to take advantage of this program and had their evictions settled. That way it's a voluntary program, so at 50% that's a fairly large take up and these are in Lamoille and Windsor County and I imagine the percentage of people who receive eviction notices is same as any place else, but clearly the numbers would be higher in the Northwest and probably kind

[Unidentified Committee Member]: of places where there's a denser population. Yes. I just wanted to point out that in case you didn't recognize her by her awesome glasses frames, we heard from Sarah Cagle on March 12 about this. Thank you.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So what is your pleasure? Do you want me to take us through a poll now, Or shall we return later?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, missing two of our members.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're missing two of our members. Is there anybody who wants to make a statement? Actually, you know what? We're gonna take a break.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We should just take

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a break. Okay. So what we will do is we've thank you. This really helps.

[Representative Thomas "Tom" Stevens]: And just on this six hour thing, just know the pledging got moved up to the front. Now you'll have a couple hours free, you know.