CHAUNCEY, Ohio — At Chauncey Village Council’s Jan. 3 meeting, member Evelyn Nagy formally introduced two ordinances that would increase protections for tenants in the village, prompting debate among the council.
Ordinance 2024-2 authorizes pay to stay, which protect tenants from eviction in situations where the tenant is able to pay past-due rent before an official, court-ordered eviction. Ordinance 2024-3 outlines “unlawful discriminatory practices” to bar landlords from discriminating against tenants based on employment, public accommodation and housing, including protections for tenants based on their source of income.
Mayor Amy Renner told the Independent she supports both ordinances.
“Evelyn has been working hard to figure out how we can be better advocates to tenants particularly in Chauncey, and I think what she’s bringing to the table is really great,” Renner said. “I know I don’t get a vote as mayor, but I do support it, and I think it would be a great benefit to the village if council adopts it.”
The council did not discuss the proposed ordinance on unlawful discriminatory practices in depth Wednesday. While federal laws against discrimination in the areas of employment, public accommodation and housing already, Ordinance 2024-3 adds a source of income protection for renters within the village.
This protection is intended to prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to prospective tenants based solely upon the tenant’s source of income — including use of government vouchers, such as those issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
While both ordinances prompted questions about enforcement, which Nagy said the council will “have to figure out” in subsequent readings, the pay to stay ordinance drew the most uncertainty from council members.
Council member Karla Dellinger, a landlord who previously said she has “a couple of rentals,” said at the meeting that she is “not necessarily opposed” to pay to stay. But she is concerned about how it would affect her and other small landlords in the village.
Dellinger again detailed a situation in which she evicted a tenant over nonpayment of rent because the tenant was multiple months behind in paying. She said the situation was “stressful to me” because it created conflict with the tenant, and financial hardship for her.
“If he would have come up and said, ‘Here’s all your money for the past three-and-a-half months,’ I would not have wanted him to stay,” Dellinger said. “I would not have wanted him to say, ‘Here’s all the money I owe you,’ and then start that process all over again. It was very, very stressful.”
On Wednesday night, Renner told Dellinger, “You sound like a really good landlord in how you work with people. … The root of what this is trying to achieve is, you know, the fact that there aren’t people like you that are renting to a lot of the people that live here, and they’re experiencing a lot of unfair practices.”
Nagy echoed Renner’s sentiment, and added that the ordinance helps level the playing field between renters and landlords.
“The landlord has protections written in, where they are able to come in and file for an eviction,” Nagy said. “Unfortunately, tenants don’t have any legal course that they can take when they’re in a position of facing eviction, but then are able to pay the rent.”
Council member Tammy Hawk noted that in the situation Dellinger described, in order to avoid eviction through pay to stay, the tenant would have had to come up with multiple months of late rent in addition to late fees and court costs.
“The landlords still have that ability to go through that eviction process. This isn’t stopping that,” Hawk said. “Those that are maybe two weeks late on their rent and, you know, by the end of the month they start getting evicted — if they had that chance to be able to pay it up and stay in their homes, that would be a good thing. You know, I’m thinking about the single mom who had a broken car … who had to choose between getting medicine for their kid and the grocery store or paying rent. … I feel like this kind of helps protect those in those kinds of situations.”
Council member Dylan Skees, who was appointed to the council for a new term at this month’s meeting after his previous term expired at the end of 2023, said his dad was a landlord growing up, and he has “seen both sides.” He mentioned situations in which tenants caused damage to his father’s properties, adding, “I’ve seen too many people take advantage of landlords.”
Renner pointed out that the pay to stay ordinance “in no way limits the ability of a landlord to initiate an eviction action for reasons other than solely for non-payment of rent.”
Council member Michael Kraus said, “I’m kind of for anything we can do to help tenants … That’s what I see this as.”
Barb M., a Chauncey resident, asked council members if they had data regarding the number of evictions for nonpayment in the village. Barb said the council should not pass ordinances based on “mythical data.”
While no council members had exact numbers on evictions related to nonpayment within the village, Nagy said, “I do talk to tenants.”
Council member Connaught Cullen was not present at the January meeting but shared some of Dellinger’s concerns about the ordinance at the December 2023 council meeting.
Pay to stay revisited
Nagy initially introduced pay to stay last fall as part of an ordinance that created a rental permit process for new rentals in the village. However, after a heated discussion in November 2023, Nagy withdrew pay to stay from the rental permit ordinance, which then passed on its final reading in December 2023.
At that meeting, representatives of tenant advocacy group United Athens County Tenants and legal aid organization Southeast Ohio Legal Services addressed questions about both pay to stay and a ban on source of income discrimination. Neither ordinance was yet up for formal consideration.
UACT member Damon Krane stressed that pay to stay legislation does not give tenants an incentive to pay rent late. Tenants struggling to pay rent will still want to avoid late fees and the stress associated with an eviction process, he said.
Southeast Ohio Legal Services managing attorney Lucy Schwallie told council members she has frequently worked with tenants facing eviction over nonpayment and said a pay to stay ordinance in Chauncey could be “incredibly impactful.”
The village council will hear both ordinances again on a second reading at its next meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 7, at 5:30 p.m.
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