During my campaign for City Council, no issue struck me as more personal and important to my constituents than tenants’ rights. At door after door, I would hear horror stories about security-deposit fraud, absentee landlords shirking their repair duties, and apartments so dilapidated that they would certainly make a run for victory in our now-famous “Worst House” contest. This issue doesn’t just intimately affect the lives of thousands in our fair city but lies at the heart of our political divide.
In a city where the majority of residents are tenants, Madison has understandably taken great strides in the past decades toward improving tenants’ rights. In response, the landlord lobby started to organize, become more aggressive, raise more money, and buy more aldermanic and mayoral candidates. I was proud to accept not a dime of money from the landlord lobby during my campaign, even though Landlords, Realtors, and Developers (LaRD) spent $164,316 on candidates this past election cycle.
Although Madison fares better than most cities with regard to its laws protecting tenants, there is much more that we can do. First and foremost, the vast majority of the good laws we have in Chapter 32 (the tenant-landlord code) are only enforceable if we sue our landlords for damages in small-claims court. This leads, obviously, to the situation we’re in now, where the laws on the books are not respected on the streets because of the incredibly low probability of enforcement. I am firmly behind Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, in his effort to place important sections of Chapter 32 in the bail schedule so that the police department and our city attorney can enforce the laws we have on the books.
One problem we run into frequently in City Hall is that we have absolutely no idea who is really renting property in our city. Many students and residents write their rent checks to “LLC #1423” or some other anonymous entity, and when in need of help, they struggle to know whom they should contact. When we make housing policy, some of it must be based on conjecture because we are unaware of many important details regarding who rents what kind of property in this city. Ald. Jean MacCubbin’s, District 11, proposal for landlord registration and licensing is a basic first step that we should have taken long ago. We license food-cart vendors in this city, but certainly where we live is a slightly more important part of our lives than where we shop for smoothies.
Further steps we must take to safeguard and improve the rights of tenants include banning so-called “earnest payments,” or second security deposits that some less scrupulous landlords charge. We should also eliminate discrimination against low-income Section 8 tenants to guarantee their right to live anywhere in the city instead of just the slums. Finally, once landlord registration and licensing is in place, we must enact security-deposit-reform to secure the hard-earned money of tenants against the illegal deductions for things like carpet cleaning that have become commonplace in our city.
In our quest to improve tenants’ rights, we must not forget to fight the tide of anti-tenant legislation coming from the landlord lobby. Recently, I was in the minority in voting against an ordinance that slashed the interest owed to tenants on security deposits from 5 percent to 1.37 percent. In the Tenant-Landlord Issues Subcommittee of the Housing Committee, however, I was able to extract a few mitigating amendments that eliminated the current language allowing landlords to not pay interest for months in which rent was paid late, as well as ensuring that the interest rate owed on the security deposit was written into the lease. Despite these amendments that improved the ordinance, it was still a money grab for landlords and bad for my constituents, and I voted against it.
The legislative side of this issue is not the only side I work with. If you or someone you know living in District 8 is having problems with a landlord, I may be able to assist in some way. The first step you should take when having a problem with your landlords is to speak with them and attempt to resolve the situation. If your efforts don’t yield success, call the Tenant Resource Center at 257-0006. In all accounts, you’ll be in the best position possible by knowing your rights and taking action when they are violated.
Ald. Austin King ([email protected]) is the Madison City Alder for District 8. He may be contacted at 608-213-0104. He is a senior majoring in Spanish.
