A “for rent” sign on Barre Street in Montpelier on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Photo by Natalie Williams/VTDiggerThis story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.A committee tasked with considering reforms to Vermont’s landlord-tenant laws punted on making any concrete recommendations to legislators, who will reconvene for the 2025 legislative session in a few weeks. Given a recent rightward shift in the Statehouse, supporters of stronger tenant protections doubt those policies will gain significant traction in Montpelier next year.“I was really hoping to land in a space where we have recommended legislation, which we obviously don’t,” said Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, who served on the nine-member committee this fall and is one of few renters in the Legislature. “We’re in a crisis. We can’t do nothing.” As state leaders have tried to address Vermont’s housing shortage and rising prices, the subject of landlord-tenant relations has arisen as a thorny — and politically divisive — issue. A draft report of the study committee’s work, which wrapped up on Monday, takes no firm stance on possible next steps on the topic, and simply summarizes the group’s six meetings and notes questions for further consideration by legislators. It outlines concerns brought forward by tenants and landlords, whose testimony to the committee hit on familiar themes. Renters and their advocates expressed support for “just cause” eviction protections, arguing that tenants may refrain from flagging habitability problems or other concerns because they know how “replaceable” they are in Vermont’s tight rental market. Landlords, meanwhile, argued that Vermont’s eviction process takes too long, and maintained that “no cause” evictions are a critical tool for removing tenants who pose safety problems for their neighbors.On one point, however, all parties agreed: Landlord-tenant issues can’t be separated from the broader issues of housing availability and affordability in Vermont. The statewide rental vacancy rate hovers around 3%, among the lowest in the country, according to a recent statewide housing needs assessment. Over half of Vermont renters are “cost-burdened,” meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to the assessment. Tenants argued that the tight rental market ultimately gives landlords greater leverage over renters, who often have few options they can afford. Nora Aronds, a member of the study committee, told the group last month that she had experienced four “no cause” evictions, even while earning a decent wage at a Burlington housing nonprofit. “There is a wild imbalance between tenant and landlord power and control,” Aronds said. Landlords countered that greater protections for renters would only make them more selective in screening potential tenants. Some said measures to constrain rent increases — another idea that came before the committee — would hobble smaller landlord operations and lead to deferred maintenance, especially as property owners contend with rising property taxes and insurance premiums.“As soon as you put a cap on what we can charge, that completely changes everything, because what that does is it makes it so we can’t even recover our costs,” said Nicholas Martin, a landlord.Lawmakers mandated the creation of the study committee earlier this year, after they failed to make changes to landlord-tenant laws last session. Most notably, lawmakers declined to advance a set of locally-approved measures that would create “just cause” eviction protections in three municipalities: Burlington, Winooski and Essex. (Montpelier approved a similar measure on Town Meeting Day this year, but it was not introduced to the Legislature last session.)Sen. Tanya Vyhofsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, plans to introduce legislation to strengthen tenant protections. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerIn Vermont, landlords can generally decline to renew a tenant’s lease for any reason or no reason at all. “Just cause” standards put guardrails around these nonrenewals, often dubbed “no cause” evictions, yet still allow a landlord to evict a tenant because they haven’t paid rent, or they’ve violated their lease. Most also limit the amount a landlord can raise the rent when leases roll over and give tenants’ the first right of refusal on a new lease. These local policy changes require approval from the Legislature and Gov. Phil Scott, and so far, none have made it to the finish line.The study committee gathered information on the impact of “just cause” eviction laws implemented elsewhere, including in New Jersey, which has had such protections on the books for half a century. Even with those standards in place — along with rent control, which is active in many New Jersey cities — residential construction has boomed, poking a hole in the oft-cited theory that such measures would slow homebuilding in Vermont. Vermont is on track to see 1,855 eviction filings in 2024 — down slightly from last year, but still eclipsing pre-Covid levels, according to testimony from the state court system. Representatives from the judiciary also noted that local courts aim to dispose of eviction cases within six months. Of about 1,900 pending cases, 76% are under that six month disposition timeline, and the remainder have lingered beyond it.The single greatest obstacle to a timely disposition process is vacant judge positions, said State Court Administrator Teri Corsones, though she noted the judiciary is approaching full judge staffing for the first time in years.The committee also heard testimony from advocates who want to see discussion of a comprehensive rental registry revived at the Statehouse this year. They considered rent-stabilization measures and policies that would give tenants an opportunity to purchase their  building if it goes up for sale, versions of which are already in place for residents of manufactured home communities in Vermont. The report concludes with additional questions for consideration, including on how eviction rates relate to homelessness, and what explains the eviction rates of providers of affordable and subsidized housing. Vyhovsky plans to introduce an omnibus tenant protection bill in the new year, she said, with a focus on advancing the locally-approved “just cause” protections and other measures discussed in the report. Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, chair of the House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerBut pushing them through the Legislature, now that Democrats have lost their supermajority in both chambers, could be an uphill battle. Gov. Phil Scott vetoed Burlington’s “just cause” charter change when it arrived at his desk in 2022, and House lawmakers failed to override the veto by a single vote. The specter of that failure has made legislators hesitate to introduce similar legislation again, and advocates for — tenant protections doubt whether they will see any action as long as Democrats are without a veto-proof majority. “I hope, in 2027 — when we hopefully get the supermajority back — a few of these policies will be put forward, and this report will be used as evidence as to why we need them,” said Tom Proctor, a housing organizer for Rights & Democracy, an advocacy group that has led the “just cause” eviction push statewide.Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, the longtime chair of the House Committee on General and Housing, said this year, he wants to track the impacts of several new programs aimed at preventing evictions before they happen, including one that helps tenants pay for back rent when they’ve fallen behind, and a pilot project in Lamoille and Windsor counties that provides certain tenants facing eviction with an attorney.But when it comes to reopening the contentious topic of landlord-tenant law in 2025, he expressed hesitation. “The philosophical question is, is it worth giving up one thing for another?” Stevens said. “It’s particularly difficult with landlord-tenant law, because of the fact that human lives are at stake…and people’s wealth are at stake with the damages to their property, or what they want to do with their property.”Read the story on VTDigger here:  ‘A wild imbalance’: Lawmakers unlikely to tackle tenant law in 2025.