NLIHC’s State and Local Innovation (SLI) project will kick off a new webinar series focused on state and local tenant protections on November 20. Part of the project’s State and Local Tenant Protection Series: A Primer on Renters’ Rights, the webinar will give attendees the opportunity to learn more about efforts undertaken at the federal, state, and local levels to address excessive rental fees, known commonly as rental “junk fees.” Registrants will hear from a broad range of speakers, including tenant advocates, members of national housing organizations, and legal service providers, about specific campaigns, resources, and efforts to advocate for laws limiting junk fees. The webinar will take place from 2 to 3:30 pm ET and will be co-hosted with the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), the University of Texas Law School, and Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA). Register for the webinar here.
In September 2024, NCLC released a report on excessive rental fees. “What the Heck, Dude!”: How States Can Fight Rental Housing Junk Fees, showing how excessive rental fees have proliferated in the private rental market and detailing the methods by which lawmakers at the federal, state, and local levels have worked to address the negative impacts of such “junk fees” on renters. The upcoming webinar will highlight the ways in which state, local, and federal governing agencies can address excessive rental fees.
Agenda:
- Welcome
- Setting the Foundation: Sarah Gallagher and Nada Hussein, NLIHC
- Texas Snapshot: Tackling Junk Fees in Austin: Shoshana Krieger, BASTA; and Heather K. Way, University of Texas Law School
- Local Spotlight: Efforts to Enact Limits on Junk Fees in Connecticut: Sarah White, Connecticut Fair Housing Center
- State Enforcement Actions and Overview of Federal Efforts to Protect Renters Against Junk Fees: Ariel Nelson and Steve Sharpe, NCLC
- Q & A
The new webinar series is meant to complement resources released by NLIHC’s SLI initiative regarding a range of tenant protections. In August 2024, NLIHC’s SLI initiative released a toolkit on protections against excessive rental fees, which includes an overview of such protections, the common components of laws that limit junk fees, information about state and local jurisdictions that have adopted such protections for renters, and suggestions about provisions that can be considered when enacting or advocating for such protections. The toolkit was the first in the State and Local Innovation Tenant Protection Series, which also includes toolkits on “just cause” eviction standards, rent stabilization laws, and laws that strengthen code enforcement procedures and habitability standards.
The toolkits are meant to provide foundational information about the core components of select policy interventions that can keep tenants stably housed – and free from the threat of eviction – and to help spark dialogue around the critical importance of state and local tenant protections. Alongside the toolkits, the SLI team has also released a series of tenant case studies focused on state and local campaigns to enact the same four tenant protections, with NLIHC highlighting state-level efforts to enact junk fees laws in the State of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Learn more about laws limiting excessive rental fees here and read NCLC's report on junk fees here.
Register for the webinar here.
Learn more about NLIHC’s SLI project at: https://nlihc.org/state-and-local-innovation