The Push for Statewide Tenants’ Protection Legislation

The Push for Statewide Tenants’ Protection Legislation

Lesson Objectives

• Learners will understand the importance of statewide tenants’ protections.
• Learners will understand past attempts at these bills in Texas and prospects for bills going forward
• Learners will be able to reference similar bills passed in other states.

Image: Adobe

Why do Texas tenants need a bill establishing statewide protections?

The simple reason: renters in Texas are not well protected from abusive, exploitative, and negligent landlords Compared to other states, Texas tenants have some of the weakest protections in the country Even when you compare Texas to states with similar histories and political landscapes, Texas is generally friendlier to landlords and worse for tenants

Image: Adobe

Why fight for protections at the state level, specifically?

• The legal and political structure of Texas concentrates power at the state legislature and minimizes the abilities of cities to effect change
• Frequently, ordinances passed by cities in Texas are overturned by state legislation enacted in reaction to these ordinances
• Passing laws in the Texas legislature is a bigger battle than local ordinances, but is a more direct path to achieving change

Image: Texas Tribune

Past attempts at statewide tenants’ bills

• In the 2021 Texas legislative session, Representative Armando Walle introduced HB 4039
• This bill was dubbed the “Texas Tenant Protection Act”, or TTPA
• This bill would ensure that Texas’ property code provides at least comparable renter protections to the statutes of other states.

• You can find details on this bill here

Image: Texas LegislativeLibrary

Past attempts at statewide tenants’ bills

• This bill was submitted to the Business & Industry committee of the Texas House of Representatives.
• The bill did not receive a hearing.
• This means that the leaders of the Business & Industry committee decided that there was so little support for the bill they did not even bring the bill up for consideration for the committee to vote on the bill.

Image: Texas House of Representatives

Current local organizing efforts

• As of June 2022, there have been several efforts to establish a multitude of protections in many of Texas’ major cities
• Austin passed many tenant protections during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic; some of these have since expired, while others have remained in place
• Of note is the San Antonio Tenant Bill of Rights, a collection of protections being pushed for by Texas Housers, the Texas Organizing Project, and other affiliated organizations

The fight going forward

• One possible pathway is building upon a successful local ordinance, to spread established popular protections from city to city and then draw statewide attention
• Legislators could also build upon the failed 2021 TTPA, coalescing activists and organizers behind a new bill and showing enough support to get it out of committee
• Whichever route is taken, the passage of such a bill will require sustained pressure from tenants and their organizations on state representatives and senators

Image: Adobe

Model legislation in other states

• New York State has perhaps the best example of a recent major upheaval in tenant/landlord laws, the “Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019”
• Two states more politically similar to Texas, Virginia and Arizona, have recently passed legislation that, while less substantive than New York’s bill, achieved multiple policy changes that Texas has not yet achieved
• Links to the text of these bills can be found on the final slide

Image: Adobe

Resources

• https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB4039/2021

• https://texashousers.org/2022/04/01/san-antonio-tenant-bill-of-rights/

• https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s6458

• https://housing.az.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/Landlord-Tenant-Act-ADOH-Publication-July-2018_0.pdf

• https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodepopularnames/virginia-residential-landlord-and-tenant-act/