“No-cause” evictions like Ella experienced are surging amid Vermont’s competitive, expensive housing market. There is limited data available to track the phenomenon. As VT Digger explained, the number of eviction cases filed in court represent only a subset of the people forced from their housing. Court data does not include renters who receive a notice of termination and leave before their landlord brings an action in court (so the renter has no record of an eviction, which can make it harder to find housing later) nor does it include people who leave because their landlord has announced a rent increase they can’t afford. 

Such “no-cause” evictions are perfectly legal. The law governing landlord-tenant relationships in Vermont is fairly short and straightforward. It provides that tenants must meet their obligations, like paying rent and treating the unit with respect, and landlords must meet theirs, like ensuring that the unit is habitable and kept in good repair. The law also provides that landlords can ask tenants to leave at the end of the lease, or with 60 days’ notice where there is no lease. This is a “no-cause” eviction. This legal framework prioritizes freedom of contract for landlords over stability of housing for tenants.

“Most of us landlords will agree, if we have a good tenant, we don’t want to get rid of them. We want to get rid of the tenants who are annoying.”

Legal “no-cause” eviction means that tenants can never know for sure that their housing is safe. Asking the landlord to make repairs around the apartment and fulfill their obligation to provide safe housing can put the tenant’s housing security at risk. Per one Brattleboro landlord who did not identify himself: “Most of us landlords will agree, if we have a good tenant, we don’t want to get rid of them. We want to get rid of the tenants who are annoying.” The fear of being ”annoying” and getting evicted puts tenants at a disadvantage. Where their landlords can evict them for no cause, tenants have reason to fear doing much of anything to be perceived as annoying, including asking for repairs. While retaliatory evictions are illegal, landlords can limit their liability by filing a retaliatory eviction as a “no-cause” eviction.  And as a different unidentified Brattleboro landlord explained, eviction attorneys “always recommend doing a no cause eviction because it is easier” to remove tenants from their homes.

Source Credit: Ariel Murphy

Tenants’ fear of being evicted for disturbing their landlords is not hypothetical. Vermont Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, one of the few tenants in the state legislature, explained that there are several tools that tenants might use to press their rights. However, “those are tools that you can use at your own risk.” On paper, tenants have rights to withhold rent to make repairs, but “the risk of being evicted if they do means they actually don’t have the rights. There’s nowhere else for them to go.” Landlords agree. Burlington landlord Robert Gauthier insists that he needs no-cause evictions to remove tenants who have a prescribed emotional support animal in no-pets-allowed apartments. Any such eviction would likely violate both the federal Fair Housing Act and Vermont’s Fair Housing Act, but calling it a “no-cause” eviction means that his tenants have “effectively no defense” in court. 

On paper, tenants have rights to withhold rent to make repairs, but “the risk of being evicted if they do means they actually don’t have the rights. There’s nowhere else for them to go.”

Noting this problem, housing advocates launched a campaign to end “no cause” evictions. The campaign began in Burlington, Vermont’s biggest city. Local elected officials who campaigned on housing issues, the Burlington Tenants’ Union, and other local housing activists worked with Tom Proctor, the Vermont Housing Justice organizer with Rights and Democracy, to develop a plan. Together, they launched a campaign to put “just cause” eviction on the ballot in Burlington.

A “just cause eviction” ordinance is a rule that cities or towns can implement which requires landlords to state a reason that they are evicting a tenant from their housing. This contrasts with “no-cause” evictions, where there is no requirement for landlords to explain to the courts why they need to remove a tenant from their home. “Just cause” or “good cause” ordinances include limits on yearly rent increases to a ‘reasonable increase’, or other similar language. This corollary limit is necessary to make a just-cause eviction ordinance effective; otherwise landlords could triple the rent and then evict someone for non-payment of the ludicrously raised rent.

For Lauren, whose rent just about doubled in 16 months, a “just cause” eviction ordinance in her city might have offered her some recourse. Without it, she has had no method to contest the rent increases that she thinks are targeted to push existing tenants from her building. Lauren, and all her neighbors in her building, received the notices of rent increases at the same time, taped to their doors. To keep her one-bedroom home, Lauren had to find a roommate. Many of her neighbors are older and have lived in the building for many years. Per Lauren, they are “going to try and make it through the winter into the springtime and then just find somewhere else to move. It definitely feels like they are being forced out with these increases.”

In 2021, Burlington residents overwhelmingly passed a charter change to enable their city council to pass a just cause eviction ordinance. On Town Meeting Day in 2023, Brattleboro, Winooski, and Essex voters had the opportunity to vote on similar charter changes for the first time. The measure passed in Winooski and Essex, and it was soundly defeated in Brattleboro.

Despite voters’ choices, tenants in the cities that approved the just cause eviction charter changes don’t have this protection yet. In Vermont, municipalities are creatures of the state, and so charter changes for these cities and towns require the approval of the entire state legislature. 

In 2022, the legislature passed Burlington’s just cause eviction charter change. Housing organizer Tom Proctor was pleased:“We got to the governor’s desk with far fewer changes than I thought. It was a hard fight to keep it the way it was.” However, Governor Phil Scott vetoed the just-cause eviction measure and the measure was short one vote to override the Governor’s veto.

The Burlington just cause eviction charter change was re-introduced in the legislature for the 2023-2024 biennium, but has not yet been discussed. The charter changes for Essex and Winooski have also been introduced without any further action so far. Senator Vyhovsky expects that the bills will get some attention in this coming 2024 term. 

Housing advocates ultimately want to change state law to eliminate no-cause evictions statewide. Such a bill was introduced in the legislature in 2023, but is unlikely to receive attention this biennium. Instead, Proctor is working town-by-town, city-by-city to win charter changes that empower the municipalities to enact just cause eviction protections to “show that this can be done without the rental market collapsing.” Legislators are not blind to this. Out of the view (and public record) of committee hearings, Proctor was told by legislators that they would not support the Burlington charter change because once renters in Burlington have more rights, it will be hard to explain why renters in Colchester, Barre, or St. Johnsbury should not also be protected.

Where just cause eviction has been on the ballot.

Though the Vermont legislature for this upcoming biennium is more Democratic than it was in 2022, with a veto-proof majority of two-thirds Democrats (and/or Progressives), the legislature has not always been the strongest protector of tenants’ rights. In the thirty-person Senate, at least ten Senators reported income from buying, selling, or renting real estate in 2023 (and an even greater percentage did in 2019).

Though approximately thirty percent of Vermonters rent their homes, only two of thirty Senators rent. Proctor posits that the “nature of the legislature,” being part-time and paying very little, means that most legislators are “rich retirees or people with generational wealth. They don’t know what the situation is like for Vermonters who rent.”

 “They don’t know what the situation is like for Vermonters who rent.”

Some legislators themselves acknowledge their blind spots. Emily Kornheiser, Chair of the House Ways and Means committee, noted that she “speaks to renters less often now, because that is not [her] social class,” and recognized that most of her legislative peers have the same blind spots. Senate Majority Leader Alison Clark shared while taking testimony on Burlington’s charter change that many legislators had been “shocked to learn” that there is such a thing as no-cause eviction and also reflected on the position of legislators in society.

Screen shot from Senate Government Operations Committee, March 23, 2022 testimony

There is a narrative out in the world that Vermont is some sort of bastion of progressivism, and part of that narrative is that tenants in Vermont already have more protections than tenants in other states and do not need another protection in the form of just cause eviction. Landlord and landlord-advocates testifying before the legislature repeat this narrative. Proctor described this view as ill-informed, “not reflective of what the actual environment is for renters.” Senator Vyhovsky described this narrative as emanating from landlords and the landlords’ association. 

Even if the narrative of Vermont as overly tenant-friendly originates from landlords, this story has spread to the general public. When Lauren received the notice of her second major rent increase, she mentioned it at work. Her boss’s boss heard this and told her off the bat that such a situation didn’t sound like it was legal. After he did some digging, he called her in and told her that he was wrong: her 40% rent increase was legal under Vermont law. Without a clear understanding that such egregious rent increases are empowered by Vermonts’ laws governing landlords and tenants, neither the people nor the legislature will act to change the rules. 

Many landlords would like to keep the current system. Angela Zaikowski, Director of the Vermont Landlords Association, testified against Burlington’s charter change at the legislature because the charter “represents such a significant departure from our current state law” and because it will “take the system out of balance.” The Vermont Association of Realtors spent more than $40,000 opposing the just cause eviction campaign in Burlington in 2021. When Burlington voters nonetheless overwhelmingly supported the just-cause eviction ordinance (63% to 37%), the Realtors Association did not stop its advocacy. Peter Tucker, a paid lobbyist for the association, testified against the charter change when it came before the legislature as well. 

In Vermont, where only around thirty percent of residents are renters, campaigns for tenant protections need to sway homeowners to support the provisions. Vermont’s Tax Department does not report what percent of tax filers filed “Landlord Certificates”, but nationally less than 7% of all individual filers reported rental income on their taxes in 2018. Senator Vyhovsky shared that homeowners, as a group, have not “come out loudly one way or the other.” Some supported the measure, “having remembered what it was like to be a renter,” but others expressed that they thought the measure “seems abrasive to landlords.” 

In Brattleboro, where landlords led a campaign against the just-cause eviction measure, the measure failed. Per Proctor, the campaign was “out-organized” by the landlords. “We just couldn’t compete against the big money that landlords were willing to throw against it.” Brattleboro landlords were organized in their opposition by property manager and Realtor Sally Fegley. There were no campaign expenditures reported in the Vermont campaign finance data tracking system, but Fegley told Brattleboro Commons that the whole campaign cost less than $350, below Vermont’s requirements for reporting campaign contributions. 

Per Fegley, the charter change in Brattleboro failed because people are afraid of crime, and local landlords campaigned on how eliminating no-cause eviction would empower drug dealers. Many different op-eds by landlords in local newspaper The Commons repeated and reiterated their argument that no-cause eviction is needed to remove “dealers and tenants who create problems on their property.” Just-cause advocates’ explanations that criminal or violent activity would provide “just cause” for eviction seemed to make little difference. The Brattleboro landlord advocates also insisted on their middle-class bona-fides.

Screen shot from Brattleboro Just Cause Eviction Community Information Meeting on October 27, 2022.

“We’re not conglomerates, we’re not corporate. We’re Brattleboro people, middle-class people trying to make a living,” said Fegley. But Fegley co-owns Windham Property Management with her husband, managing over 240 residential and commercial units. 

“There is a distinction within landlords – there’s your small family landlord, the person who owns a duplex and rents out one half – versus the person who owns like six multi unit buildings. We saw pretty significant differences there.”

Sen. Vyhovksy saw a significant difference between how larger and smaller landlords reacted to the just-cause eviction campaign. “There is a distinction within landlords – there’s your small family landlord, the person who owns a duplex and rents out one half – versus the person who owns like six multi unit buildings. We saw pretty significant differences there.” Big corporate landlords and the Landlord Association completely opposed just-cause eviction at the legislature, but testimony from smaller landlords in support of the measure was very powerful. 

For example, a property management company that manages over 50 units asserted that “no cause eviction of bad tenants greatly improves the quality of life of many others – neighboring tenants that may have been victimized by noise, overcrowding, and criminal activity” and described landlords as “‘gatekeepers’ that help establish and preserve good community behavior.” This same basic argument – that landlords protect other tenants using no-cause eviction of bad tenants – was repeated by the Vermont Association of Realtors in legislative testimony. But Sen. Vyhovsky called this argument disingenuous. “That’s not how I’ve seen landlords respond when someone complains about a tenant issue or a neighbor issue.” 

Smaller landlords brought a different perspective. One landlord who owns a duplex in Burlington responded to other landlords’ complaints: “I fail to understand what responsible landlords who run their property in a business‐like manner are afraid of.” He continued, “I ask my fellow landlords to please stop. This is not the end of the world. If you run your property in a business‐like manner, screen well and keep your property in good shape, you will be rewarded by long‐term, stable and grateful tenants.” 

Ultimately, the campaign for just cause eviction is about protecting tenants’ stability and security. As Rep. Kornheiser explained in Brattleboro, just cause eviction “recreates power dynamics that are much safer for people to live in diverse communities.” Landlord-tenant relations are governed by rules. As the Director of the Vermont Landlords Association testified, landlords “follow a process that has been prescribed to them by the legislature and court system.” Under the existing set of rules, landlords are empowered to “get rid of tenants who are annoying.” A different set of rules would lead to a different result. 

As one astute tenant noted in Burlington, the reality is that people who landlords want to evict are “anyone who they don’t like. This is the trans person, the Black person, the person who works nights and comes home early and makes a bit of noise in the stairs, the person with mental health obstacles, the person who can’t afford a $100/month rent raise. Without [just cause eviction], the power lies with the landlord to decide if those people are good enough to deserve their housing.” 

* Any name marked with an asterisk is a false name to protect the person’s identity. In light of their experiences without the protection of just cause eviction, these tenants were concerned with their landlords’ reaction to them speaking on the record.