RENTAL Act Red Flags: Rushing Evictions and Wiping Out Tenant Rights
Four ways that Mayor Bowser's proposed RENTAL Act would slash tenant protections.
Amanda Korber, Supervising Attorney

DC’s affordable housing system is plagued by incredibly long wait times and maze-like processes. At Legal Aid DC, we see tenants every day who struggle to get an answer from DC agencies to the simplest questions; who wait years for an affordable unit to become available; who are denied assistance because of technical glitches; and who spend months waiting for repairs to be made.  

 

Mayor Bowser has said she wants to “rebalance” and “streamline” affordable housing with her RENTAL Act proposal. But instead of fixing problems, this bill could make things worse by taking away important rights renters have and making it easier for landlords to kick people out of their homes. While there are many problems with the RENTAL Act, here are four of the biggest:

 

1. Creates a local one-strike law that will hurt District families.  

The RENTAL Act would allow landlords to evict tenants if they, or someone in their household, is arrested for a crime or violence or a dangerous crime. This means that people who are presumed innocent under the law could lose their home without any court finding that they actually violated any laws. And family members who were not involved or did not even know about a possible crime could be evicted too. 

DC already has a rule that allows eviction if a tenant is proven in court to have done something illegal in the home. We don’t need a new law that makes it even easier to kick families out.  

Evictions don’t make neighborhoods safer. In fact, studies show that evictions destabilize and make entire neighborhoods more vulnerable to crime.

We know that these policies don’t work because a similar federal law, called one-strike, has been in place for almost 30 years and has devastating impacts on communities. And that law perpetuates a long history of racism and economic oppression while ignoring how communities of color and low-income families are over policed.  

2. Strips tenants of their right to a critical hearing.  

When a landlord sues a tenant for non-payment of rent, they can ask for a protective order. A protective order is a court order requiring a tenant pay their rent to the court while the case is pending. The accuracy of these orders is vitally important because, if a tenant fails to make a payment, the landlord can request sanctions, including and up to automatically losing their cases and being evicted.

When a landlord requests a protective order, a tenant has the chance to explain their side and challenge the amount that the landlord says they should pay. The landlord might be seeking the wrong amount, or the housing may have such serious problems that the rent should be reduced.

The RENTAL Act attempts to upend decades-old housing law that permits tenants to tell their story before a protective order is entered. Instead, it would require the Court to automatically enter a protective order for the amount the landlord requests. Then, only at a later date would the court have to hear the tenant’s arguments for why that amount should be lowered. And at that delayed hearing, tenants would only be able to bring up housing conditions issues — even if they have other reasons why their monthly payments should be lower.

This would violate tenants’ rights to due process, clog the courts with additional hearings and motions, and create a system in which landlords are given the benefit of the doubt while tenants’ voices are heard last. Worst of all, it will lead to more evictions for tenants who can’t afford inflated monthly payments or who didn’t have the chance to prove that their rent was improperly calculated.  

3. Waters down a tenant’s right to be properly notified about an eviction.

In DC, a landlord has to notify tenants about alleged lease violations and give them 30 days to address the issue before an eviction. This is a bedrock of DC eviction law that reduces the number of eviction court cases and gives tenants a chance to fix problems before losing their housing.  

The RENTAL Act would change the way the law is written and significantly water down this tenant protection, opening the door for landlords to argue that an eviction case should move forward even if they didn’t follow the proper steps for notifying the tenant. And since landlords almost always have a lawyer — while tenants rarely do — landlords will have the upper hand to make these arguments in court.

4. Reduces the amount of notice before an Initial Hearing.  

When a tenant is sued for eviction, they must appear at their Initial Hearing, or they will lose their case by default with no opportunity to defend themselves. DC law requires that a tenant be notified about that hearing at least 30 days in advance to give them time to prepare.

The RENTAL Act aims to reduce this window to just 14 days. Fourteen days is simply not enough time for tenants to request time off work or line up childcare if they need to. Reducing the amount of notice tenants get before a hearing will only ensure that more tenants will default in their cases and be unjustly evicted from their homes.  

Reject the RENTAL Act

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