Thanks to the Tenant Bill of Rights House authors: Mullery, Champion, Clark, & Hayden
On March 8th, the House Civil Justice Committee passed and sent to the House floor a bill containing the outlines for an agreement on provisions of the Minnesota Tenant Bill of Rights. Negotiations among HOME Line, Legal Services Advocacy Project, and the Minnesota Multi Housing Association, advanced 8 of the original 27 proposals in the Tenant Bill of Rights (the following is a paraphrase of the legislative proposal):
- Late Fees: All sides agree that late fees should be capped at a certain percentage of rent. This provision will do away with daily late fees when a tenant pays their rent late and outlaw the most egregious late fee abuses. Advocates are pushing for a cap of 5% on late fees. Minnesota Multi Housing Association has yet to propose its offer.
- Receipt for Rent: All sides agree that tenants should be given a receipt if they pay their rent with cash. Also agreed upon is that the receipt for a money order bought to pay rent should serve as proof of rent-paid unless the landlord proves otherwise.
- Attorney Fees: All sides agree that if a lease entitles a landlord to have its attorney fees paid when they win a certain kind of case, tenants be entitled to the attorney fees in the same kind of case.
- Limiting Tenant Screening Fees: Agreement has been reached on how to process tenant applications for an apartment and the how to inform prospective tenants about how their application will be judged. Similar to the practice currently used in Minneapolis and St. Paul, legislation is moving forward that will require landlords to:
- provide the criteria upon which they will screen applications (will keep many tenants from paying an application fee for an apartment they have no chance of getting);
- process applications for an apartment in sequential order (so that if a tenant’s application fee is cashed, the application will be examined on its own merits); and,
- return application fees if they reject a prospective tenant for reasons other than the criteria they provided.
- Penalty for Improper Division of Utility Costs: All sides agree that if a landlord does not follow the entire law on division of utility charges, s/he is liable to the tenant for triple the damages or $500, whichever is greater.
- Bad Faith Retention of Security Deposits: All sides agreed that the penalty for a landlord not returning the proper amount of a security deposit will increase from “not to exceed $200″ to “not to exceed $500.”
- Hearing on Motion: While important details are still being negotiated, HOME Line and LSAP would require the court to hear a motion for expungement at the same hearing in which the eviction case is heard. This would allow tenants who prevail in an eviction case to have their motion for expungement heard immediately. What would happen in the case of a settlement between a landlord and tenant are still being debated.
- Renters Living in Foreclosed Property: All sides agreed that State law should be brought into conformance with Federal law. Tenants living in foreclosed property have the right to the term of their lease or 90 days beyond the redemption period, whichever is longer.
Now, the debate moves to the Senate. On March 10th, this compromise will be presented to the Senate Health, Housing, and Family Security Committee where it will be passed to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The outstanding issues identified above must be worked out by March 19th, the deadline for all policy bills to have made it through the legislative committee process.
