This summer, the Wisconsin state Senate passed legislation aimed at curbing local and municipal control over housing laws. Senate Bill 107, which was introduced by state Sen. Frank Lasee, R-De Pere, would prohibit local governments from enacting ordinances limiting a landlord's ability to show an apartment, search a prospective tenant's background or use that background information as the basis of rejection. The bill will be taken up by the state Assembly at some point in the current session.
In essence, Lasee wrote this bill to protect landlords from troublesome tenants. However, in Madison the problem often proves to be the opposite. Students in this city tend to change residences on a yearly basis and are often unfamiliar with the local renting policies, giving landlords room to take advantage of them. The problems student renters face are why Madison has the tenant protections in the first place. If anything, students need greater tenant protections.
Some of student tenants' most basic protections would be wiped out by this SB 107. Current city laws cap security deposits at a month's rent. If legislators pass this bill, a landlord could set it as high as he or she likes and could deduct for any and all infractions without limitations. Landlords would also be free to use information on income, occupation, court records, rental history and credit information from as far back as they like to deny a prospective tenant. Furthermore, the bill would even prevent local governments from determining something as essential as requiring landlords to install up-to-date fire alarms. This bill doesn't seem to consider the tenants who need to actually live in the landlords' buildings.
The new law would also make the already ridiculous mad-dash for off-campus housing students face every year even worse. City law states that landlords cannot enter a tenant's apartment without proper notice or show it to prospective tenants until Oct. 15. The new law would allow them to enter at any time and show the apartment starting the first day of the lease. This means freshmen could be pressured to start making housing decisions for the next year before they ever see their dorm room.
Luckily, there is a place students can turn to: the Tenant Resource Center. This nonprofit group provides free housing counseling and holds housing law seminars to help educate Madison residents on their rights as tenants and how to handle conflicts with their landlords. If this bill does pass, the city and perhaps even the university will need to expand these types of services.
Although the specifics of the bill are troublesome enough as they are, the greatest disservice SB 107 does for Wisconsin is trying to place a one-size-fits-all housing code for a state of such broad geographic diversity. Milwaukee is not Madison is not Cazenovia (population 333). Each city faces its own problems and challenges and each has its own housing laws for to deal with them. This bill is uniquely overreaching in that it does not necessarily tell local governments what to do, but instead keeps them from creating housing laws in their own best interest.
We urge Wisconsin's assemblymen and assemblywomen to reject SB 107 in order to continue protecting tenant rights.
