Settle in for a long thread processing thoughts and feelings about the arguments made against advancing Housing Justice during Thursday's Judiciary Committee hearing:

First up was @TonyVargas LB196, a second pass at updating the Nebraska Fair Housing Act to include lawful source of income (SOI) as one of those things you can't discriminate against when screening tenants.
https://nebraskalegislature.gov/bills/view_bill.php?DocumentID=44116
SOI here defined as:

LB196 addresses the following very real problem:
A Lot of our neighbors receive assistance to stabilize their income. Social Security, disability, Veteran's benefits, child support, alimony, Housing Choice Vouchers (section 8), etc.

And right now, it is perfectly legal for a landlord (or, as @SenMcKinneyLD11 calls them - landowners, which is amazing for so many reasons) to screen your income, see that some of it comes from any of those sources, and say - that money is no good here. Try somewhere else.

The best and most visible example of this is if you've ever searched for an apartment on Craigslist etc and seen at the bottom of the listing, "No Section 8."

So what this means is that the fact of receiving assistance meant to help you afford housing, actually seriously limits your ability to find housing in the first place.

I have a brilliant researcher who did some calling around to 230 Omaha listings on Craigslist and http://Apartments.com  that were priced at or below HUD 2019 Fair Market Rent (FMR) guidelines. 79.2% of those listings did not accept Section 8.

So. You waited years to get on a waitlist for Section 8, cleared all the background checks, made it to all of your appts, got a voucher, entered the housing market. You have a limited amt of time to find a place. You search 230 apts. 79.2% you can't even call to apply.

One argument against LB196 was whether or not this would disrupt the Free Market.
Given the above - let's just agree the Free Market, esp as it relates to housing, does not exist in any real sense for poor people. Assistance is an attempt to give people a Chance at the Market.

Another argument against LB196 was that it would Force landlords to rent to people with Section 8.
This is not true and would be obvious if you read the bill, instead of jumping to insane conclusions meant to cover for your disdain for poor people and all related assumptions.

The NE Fair Housing Act also prohibits discrimination against: race, color, sex, religion, national origin, familial status, handicap, and ancestry.
You are not forced to rent to any of the above protected classes. BUT you cannot turn away an applicant solely for these reasons.

Or, think of it this way - you cannot advertise a unit and say at the bottom, "No Section 8."
You can keep ALL of your other screening processes: income verification, criminal background, eviction history, etc.

Another argument is that PHA regulations and inspections of Section 8 units are too onerous and will drive landlords out of business.

First, please see above.

Second, PHA inspection guidelines are The Basic Minimum Housing Code.
Why isn't your unit already complying with minimum housing codes?

Third, for my favorite rebuttal of this argument we turn to the Neutral testifier - the ED of the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission who pointed out that every LL who complained about paperwork was, in fact, renting to Section 8 recipients. Why? Because it is guaranteed rent.

And then this happened, which I think perfectly encapsulates what was being articulated at the hearing. https://twitter.com/Adam_Morfeld/status/1357428442162200593?s=19

(please do not jump in my mentions to say Not All Landlords. I know this. I am genuinely not interested.)

And, just for fun, the Nebraska Realtors Assn came in opposition because they would like a carve out where they do not have to sell to people with FHA loans.

This means that the NE Realtors Assn asked the Committee to allow them to redline.

Moving right along to LB309 introduced by Sen Clements, co-sponsored by Sens Lowe, Erdman, and Bostelman on behalf of landlords, so you know it's good.
https://nebraskalegislature.gov/bills/view_bill.php?DocumentID=43495

This bill has been brought before.
It would seem to start off strong. After all, no one wants vulnerable people being scammed by internet con artists selling you junk certifications that you need an assistance animal and so, reasonable accomodations in your housing.

Except that it then goes on to provide a criminal penalty for anyone presenting these false certifications in order to receive accomodations for their assistance animal. Even though the same bill acknowledges that the scamming part is bad.

Proponents: Nebraska Assn of Commercial Property Owners/Apartment Association of Nebraska, REOMA, MOPOA, Landlord that stalked @MattHansenNE after LB433 passed in 2019.

Opponents: UNL Lawyers (as self), Disability Rights Nebraska, The ARC of Nebraska, The Freaking Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission

And in the neutral, an expert lawyer in Fair Housing who just came to point out the obvious reason that LB309 is a bad bill -
It violates Federal Fair Housing law.
Just like it did the last time they brought this bill. And the time before that.

(taking a break to attend my nephew's Zoom 4th Birthday Party. There's a magician!)

Next up was LB419 - Right to Counsel for tenants in eviction court introduced by @JohnCavanaughNE. https://nebraskalegislature.gov/bills/view_bill.php?DocumentID=43907

Proponent testimony came from @LegalAidNEB and Tenant Assistance Project lawyers (Lancaster County) and @OmahaTenants, all of whom described what eviction court Actually looks like

12 eviction judgments in 10 minutes.
Tenants rounded up in the hallway and told to sign documents they didn't read.
A woman just out of the hospital who couldn't walk evicted in minutes.
And that's just the tenants who show up to their hearing.

Why wouldn't they show up to their eviction hearing?
Maybe they didn't get the notice of their eviction hearing which is more common than you would think ( @MattHansenNE LB46 would help this)

Maybe they couldn't make it to a 9 am hearing at the courthouse because of they can't lose their job and can't lose hours or couldn't find childcare or were sick with COVID and couldn't reschedule because these don't count as the "extraordinary cause" needed to get a continuance.

( @MattHansenNE LB45 would help that)

Or, maybe (just maybe), they know eviction is a foregone conclusion because even if they did show up, how would they convince the judge that they are being wronged? How would they know the rules of evidence? How would they prove anything in a system designed to churn through them

One example of this given in proponent testimony: a tenant had proof they had paid the rent for which they were being evicted on their phone. Tried to show it to the judge. The judge said he would need to keep the phone as evidence. Tenant decided against it. Judgment: evicted.

The usual opposition was informed by people above their pay grade that outright opposing tenants having legal representation would make them look like assholes. But predictably, they just couldn't help themselves.

So they tried to focus instead on the part of LB419 that raises the eviction filing fee by $50. Basically their argument was this: I filed an eviction bc I'm losing money. An eviction costs money bc of the filing fee+legal costs+lost rental income. $50 more is too much.

"But if the LL wins an eviction judgment, which is basically 98% of the time, isn't the defendant also on the hook for all of those extra costs? Including the extra $50 proposed here?"

Answer:

Opposition said over and over that the chances of recouping those costs after an eviction judgment are slim to none. That's not entirely untrue and also not entirely surprising when you're suing someone for an inability to pay for something and then adding more to their debt.

So let's be honest about what happens after an eviction - in Douglas County the trend is to turn over that debt to a collections agency who will then pursue the person to the ends of the earth and probably garnish their wages. In Lancaster, they sue again for Remaining Causes ($)

One opponent, Ryan Norman, an eviction lawyer in Lincoln (and sometime keynote speaker on Fair Housing law for industry conferences) gave up the ghost though when he said he is not against tenants having lawyers. He just doesn't like those lawyers' "tactics".

You know.
The tactic of knowing the law.

There is probably a legitimate argument to be made about the $50 fee.
These opponents weren't making it.
Instead what they were essentially arguing is that if a tenant has a lawyer, it will be harder to evict them. And that impacts their bottom line.

And that is a gross argument when we are talking about making someone homeless.
Ryan Norman lost his cool during questioning from @SenMcKinneyLD11 and said, "all of this makes it seem like evictions are evil and they aren't evil!"

We can disagree on whether or not evictions are evil.
But it is a fact that evictions, from start to finish, are not fair.
They are a legal proceedings that has incredible consequences on a person's entire life.
And less than 4% of tenants in this situation have representation

I believe this was also the moment of one of my favorite interactions, when it was pointed out to the lobbyist for the Apartment Association of Nebraska, Gene Eckel, that his name appeared on 943 of the 3,245 eviction filings in Douglas County in 2020.

Eckel: "I know that looks bad..."
@Adam_Morfeld: "It looks bad because it's a pandemic."

Live footage of the hallway where we were listening:

Which brings up an important point we need to keep at the top of any conversation about Housing Justice.

Let's be honest about why we are all here.

It is perfectly fine for you to leave at the door all the claims to "being on the front lines of affordable housing" and "we care about our tenants" when your primary concern is profit. It's okay. You can just care about profit. But spare the rest of us the lies and paternalism.

If you insist on wrapping yourself in the mantel of benevolent landlord, then you also cannot at the same time deny what an eviction does, what an eviction means in a person's life, in their family's life. The chaos and devastation and hurt it causes.
You don't get to choose.

In his closing, @JohnCavanaughNE pointed out that if we want to do any of the following: increase student achievement, decrease the prison population, address social and economic disparities - in short, actually address poverty, then we need to do this too.

At this point it was about 5 pm.

Next up was LB402, introduced by Senator DeBoer, who wins the award for Least Contentious Housing Bill of the session.

LB402 requires a semi-annual report from the State Court containing the following:

If you're still reading this, then you are also excited about the possibility of this data.

Next up was LB453, introduced by @SenMcKinneyLD11 and honestly, this hearing was

Here's what LB453 says.
If you are a landlord in a city with a local ordinance that requires you to register your rental property with the City, then you cannot evict someone from a property that is not in compliance with that registration requirement.

A few things this bill does NOT do:
- it does not require you to be in compliance with the housing code before evicting
- it does not require you to wait a certain amt of time bw registering and evicting. You can do one right after the other.

(These were strategic decisions).

Why is this necessary?
Let's take a look at Omaha's ordinance that 100% of the people running for reelection will hold up as evidence they care about safe, affordable housing.

All rental properties within the City were required to register by March 31, 2020.

Just for fun, because COVID wasn't depressing enough, we checked eviction filings against the publicly available rental registration database.
It wasn't great.

There were 1,980 residential eviction filings from April 1-Dec 31, 2020.

1,065 of those were from addresses not registered with the City at the time of eviction.

At this point, the Committee seemed just about done with the parade of landlords concerned about their property rights. Because, see, the argument that you should have full access to the law but that you shouldn't be required to comply with it. Well. It's stupid.