Just one month after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis approved legislation wiping out local tenant rights laws in Florida and allowing Florida landlords to offer renters “predatory” security deposit alternatives, first-term U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost is taking the fight to protect renters to Washington D.C.
The Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday unveiled a new federal proposal — the “End Junk Fees for Renters Act” — that he says will increase transparency in the rental process and prohibit landlords from charging “excessive and dishonest junk fees” renters face in efforts to secure housing.
“This bill is about standing firmly on the side of renters and tenants and working people who are hurt by landlords and leasing companies that solely want to squeeze as much money from them as possible,” Frost said from Washington D.C.
“I believe number one that housing is a human right that should be affordable and accessible to everybody and that no one should be profiteering off of working people.”
Rep. Frost intros the End Junk Fees for Renters Act https://t.co/1jgryKJcby
— Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@RepMaxwellFrost) July 26, 2023
The legislation would ban rental application and screening fees; prohibit landlords from using credit scores as screening criteria for rental applicants (which Frost characterizes as discriminatory); end the practice of requiring late fees apply as credit to next month’s rent; and increase transparency by requiring landlords to disclose information in rental lease agreements pertinent to renters.
For example, how often and by how much the landlord has hiked up rent in recent years, problems previously reported by tenants, such as pest or maintenance issues, as well as the total cost of rent and other chargeable fees renters can expect to pay each month.
Much of this is to address what Frost calls “junk fees” that sometimes aren’t communicated to renters ahead of signing their leases.
Frost listed off a number of renter fees during Wednesday’s press conference that constituents in his Central Florida district have reported to his office: expensive application fees, fees for recycling trash and charges levied for calling, emailing or texting your landlord.
“We recognize there’s mom-and-pop landlords that do the right thing,” said progressive Congressman Jimmy Gomez, D-CA, in his co-introduction of the legislation with Frost Wednesday. “But there’s often people who are just trying to squeeze that last buck out of working class individuals, so we’re gonna fight back.”
Both Congressmen sit on the new House Congressional Renters Caucus, launched just a month ago to give legislators a platform to discuss, collaborate on, and propose federal policies to address critical issues facing the nation’s 44 million renters.
“I believe number one that housing is a human right that should be affordable and accessible to everybody and that no one should be profiteering off of working people.”
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That includes renters in rural areas and majority-Republican cities and counties who are at least — if not more — at risk for facing “junk fees” or other predatory practices by landlords, at least in part because those areas are less likely to have strong tenant protections in place.
It’s not a partisan issue, said Frost, who’s already developed a reputation for not mincing words when it comes to political practices deployed by Republican legislators that he finds abhorrent.
Landlords, Frost said, are “not checking, you know, whether you’re registered Democrat or Republican before you get charged the junk fee — you get charged the junk fee.”
“It’s not about Democrat versus Republican,” Frost added. “It’s about the people versus the problem. It’s about putting people over profits.”
Median rent in Central Florida, for instance, has skyrocketed over 30% since early 2020.
So has rent in other major cities and metro areas across the United States. After the pandemic-era eviction moratorium — issued early on in the COVID-19 pandemic — expired, evictions shot back up with a vengeance. Homelessness, at least in Central Florida, has, too.
Even as the median income for realtors and profits of corporate landlords surged.
Local elected leaders in Florida, in response to pressure from activists, enacted local tenant rights laws, meant to help curb homelessness and eviction during a time of significant economic precarity and increasingly unaffordable rents.
But landlord and real estate trade groups fought back — and backed legislation, pushed through by Florida’s Republican-dominated state legislature. The legislation gutted those local laws, ridding localities, like Orange County, of watered-down victories for local renters, such as a ‘tenant bill of rights’ and a requirement for landlords to provide extra notice of rental lease terminations and rent hikes above 5%.
“We’ve seen time and time again in different states, especially states run by Republicans — in the state of Florida — that they want to subvert democracy and the will of the people,” said Frost. “And so that’s why we have to work hard up here [in D.C.] to pass federal legislation to protect renters. Because at least in Florida, we can’t depend on Tallahassee to do it.”
The proposal was introduced Wednesday with the backing of housing advocacy groups such as the National Housing Law Project, National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the National Consumer Law Center.
It’s unclear at this time how much traction Frost and Gomez’ proposal will gain, as many progressive policies proposed over the years by members of Congress have languished, never or rarely seeing the light of day in congressional chambers.
For instance, legislation to raise the federal minimum wage, strengthen workers’ rights, establish a national healthcare system, establish a federal job guarantee for anyone who wants one, and to ban source of income discrimination in housing nationwide.
Full bill language outlining details of Frost’s proposal has also not yet been released.
Nevertheless, the timeliness is noted. The Wednesday announcement to ‘end junk fees’ on a federal level comes just one week after the Biden-Harris administration shared its own plan to crack down on junk fees and “build a fairer rental housing market.
It’s yet to be seen at this point how initiatives laid out in that plan — involving collaboration with companies like Zillow and Apartments.com — will pan out either.
Frost emphasized that this latest proposal in collaboration with Rep. Gomez isn’t the end-all-be-all in addressing the nation’s rental and homeowners’ crisis. He and other U.S. politicians also have other federal legislative proposals in the works.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do for renters,” said Frost. “This is one step in this broader journey of ensuring that housing is human right for every single person.”
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