A bill that aims to ensure that rental housing is safe and habitable is under further review after a political group expressed opposition to the measure during a House committee meeting Wednesday.
Arkansas is the only state in the country without a bill of this type, known as an implied warranty of habitability.
Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, filed House Bill 1410 in February, and it would set minimum standards for rental housing statewide.
Lawmakers have tried several times over past years to pass such a bill, but each attempt has failed. The Arkansas Realtors Association has historically opposed warranty of habitability bills, and a representative from the association spoke against the bill at Wednesday's meeting.
After nearly an hour and a half of testimony and presentation of the bill, Gazaway said he would meet with members of the Realtors Association to adjust the bill before taking it back to the House Committee on Insurance and Commerce for consideration.
[RELATED: Complete Democrat-Gazette coverage of the Arkansas Legislature]
"This bill will seek to enhance the rights of the nearly over 1 million people who live in this state who rent residential rental property," Gazaway said when presenting the bill. "Those 1 million people are both Democrats and Republicans. They live in urban and rural areas. They're of every race and gender. They're young, they're old.
"They live in your district. They're voters, and this is an important bill to them."
Minimum standards in the bill include a waterproof roof, running water and working electricity, among other things. The bill also says landlords aren't responsible if a tenant causes damage to the property and gives tenants protection from retaliation if they complain to officials about problems with the home.
"I think that it's important that we seek to achieve some balance in our law between the rights of tenants and the rights of landlords," Gazaway said.
Arkansas has been criticized by various housing groups as the worst place to rent in the U.S. in part because it lacks a warranty of habitability law.
Some cities have codes that landlords must follow, but in rural areas or cities without codes, there is no standard for housing. The state also doesn't have any laws in place to protect tenants who report their landlords for code violations from retaliation such as eviction or rent increases.
Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Clarksville, asked Gazaway whether anyone had died because Arkansas doesn't have a law of this type.
Gazaway said he didn't have an answer to that, but he referred questions about poor health outcomes related to subpar housing to other witnesses, including one who worked on a 2018 study that linked the two, and a pediatrician who said she'd treated children with illness and injury caused by subpar housing.
"Yes or no. No one has died because of this?" Pilkington asked.
Pilkington said in an interview afterward that the questions were part of an effort to understand the severity of the problem, and hearing from the speakers later during the hearing "painted a picture of some of the problems." He also said that just because someone hasn't died doesn't necessarily mean it's not a problem.
"I just was trying to understand the severity of the problem. Just trying to gauge if this was something -- trying to figure out why he was bringing this to the table if there had been some type of tragedy or something like that," he said.
He added that he hopes Gazaway and the Realtors can come to an agreement before taking the bill back to the panel.
Lawmakers voted after the first speaker to limit testimony to 15 minutes per side. There were three people signed up to speak against the bill and 12 signed up to speak for it.
Among the 12 were renters, landlords, a representative from the American Association of Retired Persons, a firefighter and housing experts. The three included a landlord, the representative for the Realtors and a representative from the National Federation of Independent Business, which advocates for small-business owners.
Rep. Reginald Murdock, D-Marianna, questioned whether the act would increase rents, an idea that was repeated by Cliff McKinney, a Little Rock attorney who represents the Realtors Association.
Jim Metzger, a research economist at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, testified for the bill, saying it was unlikely to raise rent because the market is still competitive. He added that maintaining a property makes "good economic sense," and is beneficial for neighborhoods.
McKinney said the association had other concerns, including the requirement that landlords have working locks, smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, if the home has a carbon monoxide producer such as a gas stove or a covered and adjacent car garage. McKinney said part of the concern comes from who should maintain the detectors and replace the batteries or what happens if tenants use the locks incorrectly.
He said the association would support language that encouraged tenants to add these devices if they want.
He added that the association thought the bill would increase lawsuits against landlords and decrease the amount of affordable housing.
Gazaway said he had already met with the association and included most of their requests in the legislation with the exception of removing the carbon monoxide device requirement because, "it was just too important."
Rep. Laurie Rushing, R-Hot Springs, asked McKinney what language could get the association's support, referring to a bill she proposed in 2017, which she said was written by the Realtors Association and rejected after one minor change was made.
"My question is -- is there ever going to be a bill that's even halfway close that Realtors can agree on? Because if they can't agree on a bill that they wrote themselves, then I'm not sure that they can agree on anything," Rushing said.
Cory Cox, the attorney general's chief of staff, also spoke in favor of the bill and encouraged legislators who had concerns or questions to contact Gazaway. He said the attorney general's office gets complaints daily about landlords who won't fix properties that aren't livable.
"We need to get something done," Cox said. "Maybe we can make a difference for some of the most vulnerable people in Arkansas."
Metro on 03/07/2019