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Domestic violence bill would abuse small landlords [September 2009] A bill at the State Legislature to give “housing rights” to alleged victims of domestic violence would place impossible burdens on small landlords in particular. The bill – House Bill No. 1747 – would block eviction of any self-claimed victim of domestic violence, stop rent increases, and allow non-victims to easily abuse the law and get the same “housing rights.” SPOA is urging all property owners to contact their State Legislators and express their views on the bill. See contact information below.
Losing control of our properties H.1747 would block eviction of any alleged victim of domestic violence because of any acts connected to domestic violence. That means owners cannot evict a tenant household where loud fights and property damage related to domestic violence happen regularly. All of us – owners and other tenants in the same building – would have to tolerate the noise and property damage involved. The “quiet enjoyment” of other tenants (which owners are legally obligated to provide to all tenants) would be violated, and owners could do nothing about it. The other tenants in a building could sue the owner or move out mid-lease (or both), leaving an unrentable apartment. Owners would be stuck with no rent coming in from vacant apartments. If owners cannot evict for property damage or for disturbing the quiet enjoyment of other tenants, H.1747 would drive small property owners out of business.
Bill leads to rent control H.1747 would lead to a kind of rent control, in order to block owners from evicting tenants by raising rents. If owners cannot evict self-claimed victims of domestic violence, tenants can take owners to court for any rent increases that tenants claim are too high – and let judges decide whether the owners are raising rents “unfairly” as a roundabout way of wrongly evicting a victim of domestic violence. If the courts did not do this, owners could get around the bill just by raising rents too high. Even if a judge decides a “fair” rent, it is still rent control. Fearing a huge court battle if they raise rents on self-claimed victims of domestic violence, owners will be hesitant to raise rents more than very small amounts. This is rent control by intimidation.
Spreading its mischief to non-victims Finally, H.1747 could be easily used by non-victims as well as victims to block eviction or stop rent increases. All a tenant needs to do under the bill is declare that he or she is a victim of domestic violence – and then he or she gets all the protections against eviction and rent increases provided by this bill. The alleged violence could be as simple as a boyfriend or girlfriend slapping their partner or raising an arm against them or speaking angrily at them – or nothing at all. No statement of events needs to be provided. No one can investigate the claim. It is self-claimed. The alleged victim just asserts that they are a victim and that the alleged event occurred in the past six months. Thus H.1747 is easily used and abused by non-victims. There already is a serious problem with false accusations of violence in domestic disputes made by one partner in order to get a restraining order to punish the other partner. H.1747 will only increase the opportunities for false accusations, but this time the false accusations will be used against small property owners.
Please take ACTION now! Contact your legislators. Please call, email, or write the Chairs of the Housing Committee (see below) and your own state senator and representative (see below for instructions).
Senator Susan
Tucker Kevin Honan To find out who your state senator and representative are, go to
www.wheredoivotema.com and fill in your street
address. Look for “Senate in General Court” and “Rep in General
Court.” These are your state senator and representative.
New smoke detector requirements Deadline: January 1, 2010
The Massachusetts State Board of Fire Prevention Regulations has approved new smoke detector rules that will go into effect on January 1, 2010, less than a year away. The new rules apply to pre-1975 properties, bringing them into conformity with post-1975 rules. Most landlords are aware that there are two types of smoke detector: an ionization type and a photoelectric type. The question is: which type should one install? Until now, owners usually chose the cheaper smoke detector, which is the ionization type. But now, recognizing different sensitivities of the two types of detector to different types of fire, the State Board has taken the choice out of our hands. The ionization technology is slightly more sensitive to fast-burning flames while the photoelectric technology is slightly more sensitive to smoldering fires. Both types of detectors, however, must meet exactly the same performance standard of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. The problem is that ionization detectors are subject to more false alarms when installed close to kitchens or to bathrooms with a bathtub or shower (steam is the problem), leading occupants to remove the batteries and thus disabling detectors entirely. So the new rule says that only photoelectric smoke detectors will be allowed within 20 feet of an entryway to a kitchen or bathroom containing a bathtub or shower. This 20-foot requirement extends into any common areas in multi-family properties. What about detectors outside the 20-foot limit? Here the State Board has taken the most expensive option, requiring both ionization and photoelectric detectors to be installed in the same locations where previously only one detector was required. Owners can install a single detector that combines both technologies, or the owner can install two detectors, one with each kind of technology.
Boston
City Council's student No more than four students per apartment
Students will
invade new neighborhoods Action Alert! below April 2008 The Boston City Council wants no more than four students in an apartment. Without consulting landlords and with only 10 minutes of debate, the Council moved quickly last December to seal a behind-closed-doors deal with District 8 Councilor Michael Ross, voting unanimously to petition the Boston Zoning Commission to limit the number of college-level students that can occupy a Boston apartment to a maximum of four students. The public hearing on the petition was December 11, 2007, and the unanimous Council vote was the very next day, December 12. After a tumultuous hearing in which students and landlords clashed with neighborhood groups from student-occupied areas of the city, the Boston Zoning Commission dismissed the public and in a secret meeting voted unanimously in favor of the zoning amendment. The outcome had already been decided before the hearing. The new student occupancy limit could have far-reaching impacts on the city and would give Boston’s Inspectional Services Department (ISD) one more powerful tool to invade multi-family properties and interfere with tenancies. Boston’s landlords can expect a crackdown on student occupancies.
Impacts on city
The ostensible purpose of the Council’s action is to control student impacts on local neighborhoods, including loud, late-night parties, excessive, strewn-about trash, and high rents. But City Councilors appear not to have considered carefully the impact of reducing the number of students per apartment in this college- and university-intensive city. ‘Back door’ rent control and devaluation. By limiting the occupants per apartment, the effect will be to limit the rents collectible from apartments now typically occupied by students. Students can only afford so much rent for housing, so the occupancy cap is a rent cap – or rent control, without saying so! That limit on rents will reduce the assessed value of those properties and reduce the property tax revenue the city receives. To compensate for that revenue loss, the tax burden will shift to non-student-occupied properties throughout the city. And the parties will continue. Displacement and high rents. By setting a maximum of four students, the basic effect will be to spread the extra students wider throughout the city. That will displace local families and households and bring premium rents to more units in more areas of the city. Coming along with the students as they spread out will be the same problems already complained of: loud, late-night parties, strewn-about trash, disorderly conduct and high rents, which will displace long-term residents. The City Council will have furthered institutional expansion of the colleges and universities without solving the problems. Student behavior will not change under this limit. The parties will continue. Housing shortage and higher rents. The occupancy restriction will force students to occupy more housing, which will reduce the total available housing in the city, creating a housing shortage. Rents in general will rise, especially in areas adjacent to student-occupied areas as displaced families and other households also spread out. And the parties will continue. College and university concerns. Reducing the number of occupants will increase the rents paid by individual students, even as the overall rent per unit declines. Students, parents, and the educational institutions will not be happy about that. And the parties will continue.
Real solutions
Enforcement – real enforcement – is the primary solution. There already are laws on the books that prohibit noise over certain levels both day and night, litter and improperly stored trash, and disorderly conduct. Enforcement of these laws needs to be ramped up substantially and targeted directly at students, including arrest of offenders. The colleges and universities all have student codes of conduct that cover off-campus behavior, with academic sanctions including expulsion. These need more enforcement also. Finally, a surety bond could be required of off-campus students. It is a sum of money, say, $10,000, paid by all the students in one apartment, from which the cost of city enforcement is reimbursed after one or two warnings. With each roommate’s money at stake, this last approach, we are told, is very effective.
Roommates are legal
The Council’s petition restricting student occupancies comes in response to a consent decree negotiated by Greater Boston Legal Services in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts in 2005, which specifically allows for roommate situations of any size in Boston so long as the property owner is not contracting individually with each roommate and so long as square footage requirements of the state sanitary code are met. Those requirements are 150 square feet for the first person and 100 square feet for each additional person. Until this consent decree, Boston’s ISD and the Boston Licensing Board were interpreting the state lodging house statute as prohibiting any occupancy with four or more persons unrelated to each other unless it is licensed and conforms to building code requirements for lodging houses. Enforcement of this interpretation was extremely lax and uneven. Click here for Boston ISD Rooming House brochure Legal problems
The Council’s petition to the Boston Zoning Commission has some serious legal problems, including constitutional questions. Students are being targeted as a separate group. Young professionals just out of school may have just as many parties as students and possibly more by some accounts. Targeting students raises a question of equal protection of the law. Is it fair to target them, or is a legislative body like the City Council required to enact general laws applicable to broad categories of people? It might be legal to restrict all occupancies of unrelated persons, but not just students. (The consent degree mentioned above, however, would prohibit this option.) Then the question is: How are students to be identified? Does a public official have the right to approach a person and ask for their occupation or its equivalent? Being a student is not illegal. Such questioning might constitute unreasonable search and seizure or, in other words, invasion of privacy.
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SPOA's Rent Control Victories
Besides the 1994 statewide referendum outlawing rent control in Massachusetts, SPOA has racked up recent major victories against efforts to bring rent control back. Read about them here.
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Water Submetering
Bill Passes |
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Worse yet: just-cause eviction & back-door rent control. Read More. |
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