Did you know that when you rent an apartment in New Hampshire, and your lease runs out, the tenants are under no obligation to actually leave the apartment? As strange as it sounds, it’s true. Under an outlier judicial ruling, here in the Granite State, the end date on a contract to lease only applies to housing providers and does not apply to the tenants.
HB 60 would reverse this judge-made law that has created confusion and unfair outcomes for decades now. This is important, not just because it sets contract law right again, but for practical reasons as well.
Imagine a scenario where a tenant was dealing drugs out of an apartment, but was otherwise lease-abiding. Everyone in the building knows about it, but if there is no proof of these illicit activities, and neighboring tenants will not testify for fear of retaliation, then there is no proof to substantiate a cause for eviction. This drug-dealing tenant is free to remain in the unit for as long as they want. The property owner would have no way of removing them from the property unless they could prove that illegal activities were taking place, a difficult task for a law enforcement official, let alone a landlord. This is unfair to the property owner, and even more unfair to the neighboring tenants who are placed in harm’s way. Under HB 60, the end date of the lease would be cause for ending their tenancy.
The main argument of the opponents of this bill is that this is a tool for housing providers to evict good tenants for no reason whatsoever. But if you think about that statement, this makes no logical sense. Why would a housing provider want to evict a good tenant? We like good tenants. We want as many good tenants as we can get. We own property to earn a living by renting them out to good tenants and to provide safe housing. If we have a tenant who pays on time and doesn’t cause a disturbance, we would want them to stay forever. It would make no business sense to force them to move.
Opponents of this bill have made several other arguments against HB 60 that equally do not hold up. For example, opponents have pointed to the fact that an eviction looks bad on someone’s record when they seek new housing. While this is true, what this argument ignores is that when a lease is up, the tenant is not automatically evicted. They are free to sign a new lease if one is offered or move out. Eviction would only occur if the tenant was not offered a new lease and persisted in not moving out despite having no legal right to be there. Of course, good tenants will not have eviction records because their housing provider will want them to stay long term.
Also, opponents have suggested that housing providers will use this as an excuse not to fix things such as broken heat or hot water. But again, there are volumes of rules and regulations that housing providers must abide by to keep their rentals up to code. HB 60 would do nothing to change those. Tenants’ recourse will not change because of this bill. There is also a long-standing section of law prohibiting retaliatory evictions.
Additionally, in this housing market a housing provider would not take a chance on prospective tenants who are not well qualified on paper because present law can lock the housing provider into a never-ending lease. By HB60 making the end of a lease actually the end of a lease, housing providers will be more likely to offer those chances for housing.
We are in a housing crunch that is consuming much of the time of the New Hampshire legislature this year. HB 60 is a simple pro-housing bill that rectifies a judicial overreach from years ago. HB 60 will not cause a wave of good tenants being evicted, as some will have you believe. But what it will do is put housing providers and tenants on equal footing when it comes to contracting, and will allow housing providers to take chances on prospective tenants that do not seem great on paper.
Remember, housing providers don’t want to evict good tenants.
HB 60 is not a pro-housing provider or anti-tenant bill. It is about providing equal footing in contracting and creating safe housing for Granite Staters. That is something that we should all support.
