The bill passed with strong bipartisan support in the House of Representatives before being transferred to the Senate for consideration.
too many times. Yes, you read that correctly: the city required a landlord to evict a tenant simply because they called the police too many times.
Unfortunately, opponents to the bill muddied the water and misrepresented the facts. They even went to far as to suggest that this bill would create a scheme for landlords to collect subsidy payments from government agencies and other third parties and then pretend as though they never received those payments.
The AMA opposed the ordinance 2010, but the city ultimately adopted the ordinance anyways. A few years after the city adopted the ordinance, the city was sued, and was forced to repeal the ordinance in 2016. But it’s important to point out that from 2010-2016 the city had the ordinance in place and families likely were evicted simply because they called the police too many times.
While the argument was laughable at best, they sufficiently confused lawmakers on the bill. Fortunately, the majority of lawmakers saw past the opponent’s tactics, and we are optimistic that the bill will get across the finish line and be signed into law.
The AMA believes that ordinances like the Surprise ordinance are, simply stated, wrong, and no one should ever be evicted simply because they called the police. HB2115 will clearly prohibit cities from adopting similar ordinances in the future.
Landlord-tenant ‘preemption’ bill awaiting final approval by Senate The AMA’s third and final priority bill for the 2019 session is awaiting final action by the Arizona Senate.
Jake Hinman is the Director of Government Affairs for Capitol Consulting. He can be reached at 602-712-1121.
HB2115, introduced by Rep. Griffin will prohibit cities, towns and counties from adopting local landlord/tenant regulations. As reported in the March/April edition of Apartment News, this bill is aimed at limiting patchwork regulation in this area of the law and more specifically to avoid a landscape where landlords would have to create separate lease agreements, pursuant to local landlord-tenant codes, across the state. There has been quite a bit of hyperbole from the bill’s opponents and in the media, going so far to say that the bill will “slam the door on future efforts by cities, towns and counties to enact their own regulations to protect tenants.” While it’s true that if HB2115 were to pass the Legislature, cities, towns and counties will be prohibited from enacting local landlord-tenant regulations in the future, these statements lack a bit of context. To that point, over the years local jurisdictions have clearly shown their interest (or lack thereof) in regulating in this area as only one city has adopted a local landlord-tenant code.
On behalf of the Bella Investment Group family, we would like to say
Congratulations
to the Pine View Village team as Finalists for the AMA Tribute Award for Best Team &Community (OTV), and to all the Tribute Award finalists for this exciting accomplishment!
All other 90 cities and towns across the state currently rely exclusively on the Arizona Landlord and Tenant Act for all landlord-tenant regulations which has been in existence since 1972. While the bill “slams the door,” in realty, no one has actually walked through the door for 45 years. Exceptions are the cities of Tempe 20 years ago and Surprise a few years ago. Speaking of Surprise… In 2010, the City of Surprise adopted an ordinance that required a landlord to evict a tenant if the tenant summoned the police Apartment News | May/June 2019
15
azmultihousing.org