Boise apartment ‘mass eviction’ is a symptom of Idaho law favoring landlords | Opinion
As the Idaho Statesman reported Monday, 20 tenants of an apartment complex in Boise’s East End are suing Commercial Northwest Property Management, which manages the building.
The company has said that the situation, which housing advocates credibly characterize as a “mass eviction,” arose because it was impossible to fix the building’s heating system in a prompt manner.
“No one is being forced to leave without suitable accommodations,” the company’s CEO insisted in a March 14 video.
But tenants had earlier received a 30-day “non-negotiable” notice to vacate, Statesman reporter Rachel Spacek reported. Then they were told they could stay. Then they were told they had three days to turn in their keys.
Mixed messages, to say the least.
The details of the particular case are complex, but they are also part of a broad pattern: The Idaho Legislature has for years decided to make life easier for landlords and harder for renters.
Lawmakers could do lots of things to make situations like the one at Cambridge Dorchester Apartments less common. The easiest would be to follow the large number of states that allow renters to legally withhold rent in certain circumstances until landlords complete necessary maintenance and repairs.
Oregon, Washington and many other states allow tenants to either withhold rent or make repairs themselves and then deduct the value of those repairs from their rent if the landlord won’t fix problems. Idaho’s laws, which are stacked in favor of landlords, only allow withholding rent when there are no functional smoke detectors — a cost so minor that many tenants probably don’t even bother.
Allowing rent withholding would drastically change the dynamic in cases like that at the Cambridge Dorchester Apartments. If tenants could all withhold their rent and legally remain in place until their apartments were rendered habitable, the landlord would have a much stronger financial incentive to make repairs fast.
And this isn’t a one-off. Law student Nicolette Clark detailed the practices of informal eviction she experienced while a student at Northwest Nazarene University in a January column for the Idaho Capital Sun. Her landlord turned off the air conditioning when the heat topped 100 degrees, then turned off the heat in December, saying the bills were too high, Clark said.
“Landlords have power and when they abuse it, they create more housing insecurity and homelessness,” Clark said. “Without friends and family, I would have become homeless simply for asking for proper heat and air conditioning.”
In that situation, Clark should have had the option to withhold rent until the unit was livable.
But don’t count on any such actions by the Idaho Legislature. Despite some vague recent gestures toward some sort of right-wing populism, when the rubber meets the road, the groups with powerful lobbyists tend to win out there.
In recent years, the balance has generally tipped more, not less, in favor of landlords at the Legislature, including efforts to make it easier to physically remove tenants quickly after eviction proceedings.
The single recent exception was a bill authored by Sen. Ali Rabe, D-Boise, which added the requirement that late rent fees be “reasonable” — a term that is too vague to offer robust protection but may offer an avenue of challenge if landlords charge fees that are shockingly egregious. And amendments to the bill mean that it won’t affect current leases, only leases entered into after July 1.
So long as there is no change at the Legislature, Idaho will have little hope for substantive rental regulatory reform. The landlords have nearly all the cards, and most lawmakers have no apparent desire to empower the ordinary people who have to deal with the consequences.
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman based in eastern Idaho.
