Connecticut: Support just cause eviction protection expansion in 2024
Hannah Srajer and Luke Melonakos-Harrison | CT Mirror
This year, Connecticut has an opportunity to expand its existing Just Cause Eviction Protection law to include all people who rent their home — no matter their age, disability status, Zip code, income, or the size of their apartment building.
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In our urban centers and small towns, from New Haven to Stamford to Putnam, Connecticut renters are refusing to accept neglected buildings, unaffordable rents, evictions, and rising homelessness as our fate. We are organizing tenant unions and challenging corporate real estate interests head on. After decades of housing prices outpacing wage growth, when more of us than ever are rent-burdened and housing insecure, tenant unions promise a pragmatic and even hopeful path forward for the many Connecticut residents whose wages are too low and whose rents are too high.
Expanding Just Cause this year will ensure that all people who rent their homes can organize a tenant union, negotiate for decent conditions and rents, and advocate for themselves and their neighbors without the threat of a no-fault eviction. Because no-fault evictions allow landlords to evict people without providing a justification, they serve as an easy tool of intimidation. The lack of basic protections against arbitrary evictions jeopardizes good faith negotiation between tenants and landlords — not to mention basic fairness — since landlords can take away a renter’s shelter at any moment, for any reason. Expanding Just Cause to include all renters would prevent such abuses of power.