Austin leaders voted to establish new protections for renters aimed at staving off evictions and displacement, and allowing apartment complex residents to organize with their fellow tenants Oct. 27.
The rewrites to portions of city rental property code apply to a majority of the city's housing space. According to 2020 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, 54.49% of all units in Austin are renter-occupied.
The items were backed by several local advocacy groups and tenant organizations who said changes would balance the power dynamic between tenants and landlords in Austin while supporting renters’ ability to stay safe and housed. Some real estate groups and rental housing providers in the city have said the changes may not result in the intended support for tenants and would negatively affect landlords and property owners who already experienced recent leasing disruptions.
The organizing and tenant relocation measures are based on resolutions from former Council Member Greg Casar approved in his final meeting on City Council in February. Casar, now on the campaign trail for Central Texas's 35th congressional district seat, said earlier this month that the policies should be finalized to better protect local tenants after both city and county governments halted many evictions in response to COVID-19.
“During the pandemic, Austin led the nation in keeping thousands of people in their homes with our eviction protections,” Casar said in a statement. “But now, we need permanent renters’ rights protections, so that every Austinite can organize together without fear of retaliation. Austin rents have soared, and it’s time for our city to protect renters who collectively push for lower rents from their landlords.”
Council's review of the property code updates comes weeks after voting to send nearly $299,000 to the Austin Tenants Council for a tenants' rights program. Additionally, District 2 Council Member Vanessa Fuentes sponsored another item related to the relocation of mobile home community residents and said council's October actions amounted to a "renters' rights agenda" in the city.
Eviction extension
One ordinance approved Oct. 27 sets a new standard practice for how renters can respond to evictions in Austin, building on temporary rules that were first enacted in response to the pandemic.
An eviction begins when a landlord sends a written notice to vacate to a tenant for reasons, such as a late lease payment; that notice is then followed by the filing of an eviction lawsuit. Under Texas law, tenants must be given at least three days after a notice to vacate before eviction proceedings continue, unless the tenant and landlord have contracted for a different time period in their lease agreement.
Previously, tenants may have had the opportunity to cure, or correct, any potential lease violations—although curing did not guarantee an end to the eviction process. The code update established a new right to cure lease violations by granting tenants at least seven days to do so before an eviction moves along.
That timeline was reduced from a 21-day period to cure that was originally proposed. City management was also asked to review the real-world effects of the curing policy over the next six months; recommended improvements to the ordinance could be given to council next year. And the item passed with a qualifier that the new cure policy does not apply to smaller landlords who own less than four residences.
Shoshana Krieger, project director for the Austin nonprofit Building and Strengthening Tenant Action, said many eviction cases can come down to the days or weeks a tenant needs to make up a late payment. Especially when issues are caused by unexpected costs, such as a funeral or medical expense, she said a right to cure can keep people from losing their place to live.
Emily Blair, executive vice president of the Austin Apartment Association, a Central Texas rental housing industry trade group, has said a new right to cure is unlikely to change the number of evictions that move forward and could potentially put renters in a deeper hole and may result in legal challenges for the city.
"We know the temporary 60-day opportunity-to-cure measure introduced during the pandemic did not result in rent paid nor evictions prevented. Payment plans, rental assistance, and other outreach efforts are what kept renters housed," Blair said in a statement. "We encourage Austin City Council to focus on creating meaningful, long-term solutions to help renters in need, such as making emergency assistance available without an eviction prerequisite, rather than proposing policies that conflict with state law and offer no tangible help for renters."
The Austin Board of Realtors questioned whether the policy is legal and what unintended consequences it might bring.
"These effects include higher application fees, increased security deposits, higher credit score requirements, lower inventory in the rental market, potentially raising market rents and a potential deterioration of the landlord/resident relationship," ABoR officials said in a statement.
Mayor Steve Adler said the revised ordinance, which went through several delays and changes in recent weeks, was drafted based on input from both supportive tenant advocates and rental property industry members who have opposed the concept.
“I appreciate that this does not do everything that everybody wanted it to do in the way that everybody wanted it to be done, but it does provide a cure with some accommodations and compromises," he said.
The right-to-cure ordinance would go into effect months after the expiration of local and national policies designed amid the economic uncertainty and public health concerns related to COVID-19. The number of local eviction filings has once again risen near typical levels with hundreds of cases now tracked through the Austin area each month.
Right to organize
Council also took up a code update ensuring that renters can participate in a tenant organization without interference from their landlords. Any retaliation against renters for activities, such as posting tenant organizing information in public, meeting with other tenants, inviting tenant advocates to their complex or requesting maintenance work, would be made a misdemeanor punishable by a fine.
District 4 Council Member Chito Vela said his updates to the ordinance passed Oct. 27 were crafted with support from stakeholders on both sides of the eviction measure.
Daniel Armendariz, housing support coordinator at the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, said the curing and organizing items together would strengthen renters' rights—and limit the number of people at risk of losing housing.
“From a practical standpoint, the idea that hundreds if not thousands of individuals every year face the prospect of eviction because they’re a dollar short and a day late on rent, from that perspective obviously that ordinance would have an immediate and profound impact on a tenant’s ability to mitigate their own eviction. But a tenant’s right to organize is significantly important, especially in a market as tight as Austin’s where basically the balance of power is obviously weighted towards landowners," Armendariz said.
Krieger said BASTA has experienced several instances of landlords calling the police on tenants for meeting and organizing, which she said "effectively quashes" those activities despite being legal, a situation the new policies could prevent. And Taniquewa Brewster, a city renter, told council she would have recently faced eviction without engaging in organizing activities.
“If we didn’t have that right to organize ... we would’ve been homeless," Brewster said.
Relocation review
Another piece of the "renters' rights agenda" proposed by Fuentes moved forward protections for mobile home residents facing displacement.
Fuentes' resolution calls for added city guidelines that would give residents advance notice of relocation and access to city resources if their facilities are in line for repairs or redevelopment. She also said the measure was designed to preserve affordability across town.
"The resolution also seeks to deter developers from redeveloping mobile home sites as luxury RV parks that cater to people coming to the city for short-term stays in an effort to preserve mobile home parks, which are some of the last remaining nonsubsidized affordable housing," Fuentes said in a message board post.
The push comes months after council voted to close what Vela called a "loophole" in city code covering how tenants are notified of relocation if their facilities are being renovated or redeveloped. A final ordinance based on the approved resolution will return to council by April.
