The day before he stepped down as alder, Eli Sabin submitted a proposal to his local-legislative colleagues that would require landlords to include in their leases a packet of information describing the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants. That proposed ordinance amendment was i ncluded as a “communication” on the agenda for Monday’s full Board of Alders meeting. It’s now up to aldermanic leadership to decide whether or not to send the matter to a committee for a public hearing before taking it up for a potential final vote. Click here to read the proposal in full. Sabin submitted the proposal on Dec. 31, 2025 — one day before he resigned as the alder of Downtown/East Rock’s Ward 7 in order to move to Westville. (Sabin resigned less than an hour before he was set to be sworn in for a new two-year term. His resignation means that Ward 7 must hold a special election to fill the empty aldermanic seat within 45 days. The Ward 7 Democratic Town Committee plans to hold a special meeting on Zoom at 7 p.m. to nominate a candidate to run in that election to replace Sabin. Meanwhile, on Monday, ace Connecticut political news reporter Mike Cerulli wrote an essay speculating on whether or not Sabin is considering a run for the 92nd district state house seat that has long been held by incumbent Democrat Pat Dillon. Asked by the Independent on Tuesday, Sabin said he’s considering such a state-house run in Westville, but hasn’t decided yet.) Ok. Now back to the tenant’s rights transparency proposal. “More than 70 percent of residents in the City of New Haven rent their homes,” Sabin wrote in a Dec. 31 letter to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers in support of this new legislative proposal. “As a result, ensuring the safety and sanitary conditions of all rental units in the City of New Haven is critical to the quality of life, public health, and safety of all City residents. “However, renters in the City of New Haven are often unaware of their rights and responsibilities because the local, state, and federal laws governing landlords and tenants are complicated and/or difficult to find and understand. Because of this lack of transparency and easily accessible information, renters often are forced to live in unsafe or unhealthy housing conditions because they do not know how to use available protections and processes to ensure their landlords follow housing, building, and fire code laws and other landlord-tenant laws and policies.” And so, if passed into law, Sabin’s proposal would “help to establish transparent leases for tenants in the City of New Haven by requiring that all landlords that are required to participate in the city’s Residential Rental Business Licensing program also must include in their leases a packet of information prepared by the Livable City Initiative Bureau describing the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants. Tenants will benefit from this transparency, and landlords will also benefit because tenants will be better educated about their rights and responsibilities as renters.” The ordinance amendment proposal states that the new “Housing Rights and Responsibilities Packet” should be prepared by LCI “as soon as practicable after October 1, 2026, and annually thereafter”. To quote directly from the ordinance amendment proposal, the packet would have to include: A concise summary of the relevant laws and policies affecting the rights, obligations, and remedies of landlords and tenants in New Haven, including but not limited to those available under: The City of New Haven Code of Ordinances and other relevant local ordinances and policies dealing with the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants, and The Connecticut General Statutes and other relevant state laws and regulations dealing with the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants. The summary may include information including but not limited to descriptions of those provisions in the laws and regulations in subsections B(1)(a-c) related to housing, building, and fire code standards; the Fair Rent Commission; options for ensuring proper maintenance of a rental unit; tenant unions; and other provisions at the discretion of the Bureau, and Information and/or reminders about how to register to vote and the need to update voter registration after moving to a new residence. In a Tuesday phone interview with the Independent, Sabin said that he still plans on championing this new local proposal, even though he’s stepped down from the board. “I still think it’s important and wanted to get the conversation started,” even though he submitted it later than he would have liked because of his focus last year on making sure the “Downtown for All” upzoning law made it across the finish line. Sabin said he was inspired to introduce this proposed “tenant’s rights transparency” law in part based on his experience representing New Haven tenants in eviction court as part of Yale Law School’s housing clinic. Again and again, he said he saw tenants withhold rent if they felt like their landlord was not meeting their obligations in keeping a property up to housing code and conducting regular maintenance. “That is not how it works,” Sabin said; state law requires tenants to instead go to court and get an agreement to pay their rent into escrow in such circumstances. They legally can’t just stop paying rent altogether. A “plain language explanation of how that works would be valuable” for tenants and landlords alike upon the signing of a new lease. From his own experience as a renter, Sabin also recalled living in an apartment in New Haven where the building’s boiler broke in January — causing the temperature to drop indoors to as low as 45 degrees. Sabin said that state law imposes specific responsibilities on landlords when the heat goes out in the winter, including requiring them to relocate tenants after a certain period of time. Such information in a packet, he said, would also be helpful for tenants and landlords to know upon signing a new lease. “Overall, the goal of the legislation is to make it easier for tenants to understand what their rights are, what resources they might have if there are maintenance issues or something else has gone wrong.” Such a requirement should also be helpful for landlords “for everyone to be well-informed” about their respective responsibilities. The post Now-Former Alder Proposes “Tenant’s Rights Transparency” Law appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less