Discrepancies between tenants and their landlords came to a head at a city meeting Thursday after the recent passage of two Senate bills that would drastically change the rights of each group.
The Landlord and Tenant Issues Subcommittee met to discuss a Senate bill that passed last November, along the new tenant-landlord law in a different bill passed Wednesday.
Board members said many tenants and some landlords are still confused or uninformed about the new legislations.
Brenda Konkel, executive director of the Tenant Resource Center, said the November bill has a huge impact on tenants, including students.
One of the key items of the bill says that security deposits imposed on tenants are no longer limited to one month’s rent. Another major change is that landlords can deny housing when tenants refuse to disclose their social security number.
Landlords also do not have to take pictures to show the conditions of the property and things that need to be repaired to the tenants.
“The problem is that many legislators are landlords themselves,” she said. “A lot of students participated in the rally last year, but the bill got passed anyway.”
The Tenant Resource Center has designed two versions of new “Tenant and Landlord Rights and Responsibilities” pamphlets. In one of the versions, old legislation changed by the November bill is crossed out so readers can better understand the changes, Konkel said.
Committee members said that despite how the new marked pamphlets are very long, it is important to make them available to avoid confusions.
In addition to to the November bill, the Senate passed a bill Wednesday which rewrote tenant-landlord laws.
One key part of the new bill is that the state and cities now cannot prohibit landlords from pursuing eviction of a tenant. Cities are not allowed to ban evictions on holidays such as Christmas and landlords are also given the power to dispose of left-behind property.
“A big change is that they can basically have [tenants’] property left behind or abandoned and sell them and profit from it,” Konkel said.
Ald. Bridget Maniaci, District 2, said that the new bill is much less about Madison and has a lot to do with storage properties. She added that the language of the text in the bill is very hard to understand and may cause confusion.
Konkel said only a small group of landlords are aware of the possible new changes.
“We are in very bad shape before it involves rewriting everything and retraining your staff and volunteers. It’s absolutely awful that they don’t understand,” Konkel said.
She also said many people have been contacting the center for information, but the center does not have the capacity to fulfill all its needs.
Assistant City Attorney Lana Mades said no changes in legal documents can be made based on the the bill before it is approved by the Assembly and the governor.
Konkel said she would hold off making any decision about the bills for the moment.
She said the changes made in the pamphlets are only based on the November bill at the current stage. If the new pamphlets are approved by the whole housing committee, they will be available on the Internet and will also be distributed physically to landlords.
