We are one major step closer to keeping families housed!
We are working to increase transparency for renters in Virginia.
Our bills, HB 1361 and SB 294 made it through crossover and passed out of both houses! We are grateful to Senator Aird and Delegate Maldonado for sponsoring and fighting for these bills.
Once signed by Governor Spanberger they would become law and would take effect on July 1, 2027.
You might be wondering how we got here.
Last year we stopped 100 evictions from across the City of Richmond based on referrals that our members and partners sent our way. Only 25 of those households were in Greater Fulton, but we knew that we could assist, so we did.
We discovered three key problems:
- The general ledger was wrong in 75 of the total 100 cases
- In 96 of those 100 cases the renter had been unable to obtain a copy of their general ledger
- Landlords were stacking up utility arrears for months until they equaled two months of back rent before filing an eviction and tenants had no idea what they owed
It took one email from us to the landlord to get the ledger and charges, but we had evidence from each tenant that they had repeatedly attempted to obtain this information on their own. In all cases with an incorrect ledger, we were able to work with property management to correct it. We connected the renter with any resources to resolve the balance if there were any arrears that they could not afford. We assisted 10 renters with readjusting their budget for future months so that they could make the arrears payments themselves. None of these households were attempting to avoid paying rent or charges—they just wanted to clear up discrepancies. Seems reasonable, right?
We also learned that landlords were evicting people over RUBS (ratioed utility billing systems). RUBS is used in apartment buildings to charge residents an estimate of utility usage, which is not necessarily provided as an itemized statement like in s single unit.
These aren’t isolated problems. Current law requires that tenants must know to request the general ledger from their landlord. The tenant then must wait until the landlord provides it and, as we found, this may take a very long time. Under current law, the tenant must also know that they can request their itemized RUBS statement and can be required to pay for the reproduction of it.
People all over the Commonwealth are being taken to court right now without being able to obtain a copy of the charges being used to evict them. This means that they are unable to properly prepare for court and only see the ledger as they are in front of a judge.
Stay tuned for our next call to action on these bills.