RENTER PROTECTION PROPOSALS

Lawmakers have introduced several bills to bolster tenant protections. Here’s where those bills stand now, about two weeks before the session ends. None of the bills has passed a floor vote in either chamber.

SENATE BILL 99

Status: Dead

Local governments are currently barred from enacting rent control policies. This proposal would have changed that by allowing cities, towns and counties to limit rent increases.

SENATE BILL 298

Status: In committee

This bill would limit rent increases for New Mexicans who live in mobile home parks. It would also require park owners to give residents advance notice if the park is to be sold.

HOUSE BILL 6

Status: In committee

Landlords would have to give residents 11 days, instead of three, before filing for eviction due to unpaid rent. The bill would also clarify protections for renters against retaliation when lodging complaints about poorly maintained properties.

SENATE BILL 375

Status: In committee

Rent increases would be limited to 5% a year plus inflation up to a total of 10%.

HOUSE BILL 414

Status: In committee increases that the proposed law would impose.

New Mexico would get a Department of Housing to coordinate housing policy under this bill.

If a property owner raises rent drastically or an investor swoops in to buy a park and force out the residents, it can be a devastating financial blow, Griego adds.

“It’s very difficult for tenants to move their homes out of their parks. It’s extremely cost prohibitive,” she tells SFR. “They often have to leave their home, and what we see is the parks will step in and offer to buy it and they’ll offer pennies on the dollar. It makes them lose their most valuable asset.”

The bill didn’t even get a vote during its first hearing in front of Senate Health & Public Affairs—the same committee that killed the rent control legislation. Instead, Ortiz y Pino asked one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Bill O’Neill, D-Albuquerque, to work with opponents on possible changes to the bill. The legislation is not scheduled for another hearing.

Another piece of legislation, Senate Bill 375, would limit rent increases to no more than 5% a year plus inflation. Sponsored by McKenna, a Democrat from Albuquerque, it is also awaiting a hearing in the Health & Public Affairs Committee.

Backers of tenants’ rights are a little more optimistic about House Bill 414, which would create a state department of housing to coordinate policy and assistance.

“It’s coming together as a good conversation,” says Rep. Andrea Romero, a Democrat from Santa Fe cosponsoring the measure.

Romero acknowledges it’s a bit late in the session for the bill to get a first hearing in front of a committee. But the lawmaker says she is finding more interest in the issue of housing this year.

“The feedback is a bit different. It’s not just ‘no,’” she says.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, a Santa Fe Democrat who has disclosed owning commercial property in the city, says the lawmaker supports tenant protections and argues it’s too soon to count anything out.

Still, while there is no big-spending advocacy group for renters, the organizations lining up to oppose some of these bills are formidable.

The New Mexico Association of Realtors, for example, has lobbied against rent control. It spent nearly $500,000 during the last election cycle, including on donations to lawmakers. The New Mexico Manufactured Housing Association, which is lobbying against the bill to expand protections for mobile home park residents, gave tens of thousands of dollars to candidates and political committees last year. And one of the lobbyists for the Apartment Association of New Mexico–which has also lobbied against rent control–gave $30,000 to legislators’ campaigns in the last election. This spending has flowed to Republicans and Democrats, but particularly to legislative leaders who can control which bills get a vote. So far this year, the association has also reported spending more than $500 on a dinner for leaders in the Senate.Meanwhile, the New Mexico Association of Realtors was a major donor to the governor’s inaugural committee.

Even if these pieces of legislation are moving slowly or not at all, housing dominates conversations at the Capitol in a way that the issue hasn’t in years.

“Everyone knows that there is a housing crisis. Everyone is aware rents are skyrocketing, people are becoming unhoused at a high rate. It’s heartening to see people are paying attention,” Martinez, the UNM professor, says.

Much of that is due to the COVID-19 pandemic, says Rubio.

In early 2020, officials recognized it was impossible to ask people to stay safe at home and curb the spread of the disease if many New Mexicans had no home. The New Mexico Supreme Court put a moratorium on evictions at the time. And while that policy has ended and assistance programs have scaled back, the pandemic has still forced even reluctant lawmakers to grapple with housing policy.

Backers of bills like HB6 argue the Legislature should take the conversation spurred by the pandemic and use it to prepare housing policies that can help New Mexicans weather the current crisis as well as future housing crises.

“We were already experiencing the housing crisis before the pandemic. What we are trying to say within our legislation is that the pandemic isn’t over and there will be challenges we face in the future,” says Rubio. “There will be changes in the market, changes in our economy. There’s all these different factors that we as consumers don’t have control over. The protections we are trying to implement won’t solve all the problems but it can provide some longterm stability for families.”

But lobbyists aren’t spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to influence lawmakers on behalf of renters. The voices of landlords are often so much louder than the voices of renters at the Legislature, Martinez says. That so many legislators are also landlords is somewhat inevitable, too, he adds.