Two bills intended to shield renters from neglectful landlords have died in committee at the Indiana Statehouse.
Senate Bill 202, authored by Senator Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, would have required landlords to restore access to heat, water and other essential services within 24 hours of a tenant reporting a problem. It would have allowed tenants to pay rent into escrow, with the money released to landlords only after essential services were restored.
The bill also attempted to crack down on absentee landlords by requiring that they either live in the state, maintain an office there or contract with an Indiana-based property management company.
Qaddoura told the Post-Tribune that he expected to be able to pass a version of the bill with the escrow provision removed, but met with opposition from his Republican colleagues. He said that Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, informed him earlier in the week that GOP committee members would not allow the legislation to pass even with the change.
Qaddoura withdrew the bill during its hearing on Wednesday in hopes of eventually getting it passed in a later legislative session. The bill is now bound for a summer study session, where it will be further discussed by legislators. In the mean time, Qaddoura said he will to “try to find a home for some of the provisions of my bill that might be accepted by my colleagues.”
Brown’s office did not return multiple requests for comment.
The bill had gained the interest of some of the Hobart residents who were displaced last July when Hobart officials declared an apartment building located at 215 East Street as uninhabitable. The building had black mold, standing water in the basement and water leaking into the main electrical box among other hazardous conditions. Building owner Joseph Gore has spent much of the past six months delaying repairs to the building that would bring it back up to code, but at a recent Hobart Board of Works meeting, city officials were encouraged that the work was finally in motion.
Hobart resident Lorraine Guillen-Wentz heartened to learn about Qaddoura’s push for stricter tenant protections and dismayed that it did not succeed.
“That’s very disappointing,” she said. “That’s disturbing.”
Representative Sue Errington, D-Muncie, authored a similar bill in the Indiana House of Representatives. That legislation also died Wednesday after the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee declined to schedule a hearing for it.
Errington said, in an interview with the Post-Tribune, that she was spurred to take action on the issue by a 2022 protest by student renters in Muncie urging legislators to adopt stronger tenant protections. The Muncie City Council passed a resolution urging the same, but could do little else— In 2021, the Indiana state legislature overrode Governor Eric Holcomb’s veto to pass Senate Enrolled Act 148, a law that heavily restricted municipalities’ ability to enact their own regulations on landlord-tenant relationships.
“This bill was my response in hopes that we could do something to get some remedies for people who were just being ignored by their landlords,” she said.
Like Qaddoura, Errington said that she plans to keep pursuing the issue in future sessions.
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