Despite reform, tenant advocates see more work ahead

In 2022, Lisa Sadler and her children relocated from Waverly Place Apartments to a hotel after her unit was red-tagged. Three years later, it happened again.

After black mold was discovered in her home following a leak that went unfixed for months, a doctor told Sadler not to go home. She said one of her sons, who has mental and physical disabilities, had been experiencing breathing problems for months. The doctors believed the mold may be the culprit.

Sadler and her children have been living in the Homewood Suites Hotel in Lansing Township July 13. the Lansing Housing Commission, which manages Waverly Place, is paying for it.

That was already the commission’s practice. But now all tenants in Lansing can count on their relocation costs being covered in such circumstances, thanks to an ordinance the City Council passed last week. The ordinance requires landlords either to obtain an insurance policy that covers emergency tenant relocation costs or agree to reimburse the city up to $2,550 of those costs. The ordinance is meant address situations like Sadler’s.

However, Sadler said the free hotel stay is far from a solution. She said if maintenance requests had not been ignored or put off for months to years, it would never have been necessary.

“If we had the right to repair, we could have those things repaired within 24 hours,” she said.

That right is one of many tenants’ rights issues that advocates say is still needed in the Lansing area. While a “Renters’ Bill of Rights” proposed in 2023 by state Rep. Emily Dievendorf, D-Lansing, never went anywhere, the local The Rent Is Too Damn High chapter is working to get similar protections before the City Council.

“If you look at different cities’ municipal codes around Michigan, you’ll notice Lansing has a lot less on the books when it comes to tenant protections,” said the group’s co-chair, Ross Fisher. He said the City Attorney’s Office is reviewing five “big tenants’ rights ordinances that we’re pushing to Council right now.”

Those protections are the right to repair one’s own property, the right to legal representation in eviction proceedings, the right to renew a lease when in good standing, discrimination protections for formerly incarcerated people seeking housing and protections against retaliation for tenants who organize for better housing conditions.

City Council President Ryan Kost said he was proud of the recent ordinance “because I don’t want to get a phone call ever again where someone says there’s 2 feet of sewage in their basement backed up and the landlord won’t do anything,” but that though “this piece of legislation is the right step forward,  it’s not the last step.”

He confirmed “several pieces” of suggested legislation were being reviewed. While the legislation is sourced from other Michigan municipalities, he said that was no guarantee that they are possible here. He said he spent three years working with the city attorney to get the current ordinance approved, though a similar ordinance is on the books in Ann Arbor and Jackson.

“The response was always that because they’re doing it in Ann Arbor or Jackson doesn’t mean it’s legal.”

After a new city attorney and some wording workarounds, Kost was able to get the green-light, but other proposed legislation may face similar troubles.

He said that “the next thing that needs to be addressed” is adding tools for the Code Enforcement division to “catch up on backlogs and move forward.”

In an interview, Dievendorf said tenants’ rights and homelessness were inextricably linked, adding that “when people lose access and housing, there is not currently enough housing to give those folks a place to go” in Lansing.

But Brad Simtob, managing partner of Simtob Management Investments and Flatz Living and a board member of the Rental Property Owners Association of Mid-Michigan, said the discussion failed to take into account a simple, difficult fact: Tenants are defaulting in increasing numbers, making money tight for landlords. He attributed the issue to “a really tough job market” and increased layoffs.

“If the resident loses their job, it’s almost impossible for them to catch back up on their rent,” he said. “It makes it really hard to maintain buildings properly when we do have more and more tenants defaulting and losing their jobs.”

Both Kost and Dievendorf said current and proposed policies target “bad landlords,” and that “good landlords” would be mostly unaffected. Simtob said he supported cracking down on “bad landlords,” but it wasn’t quite that simple.

“We want them to understand how these ordinances affect good and bad landlords alike,” he said. “Because you can’t just pass an ordinance that only goes after bad landlords, right? It goes after everyone.”

Simtob declined to answer a question about a lawsuit Simtob Management settled with the city of Lansing in 2023, in which it agreed to pay $10,091 of hotel expenses for tenants displaced when the entire Holmes Apartments complex was red-tagged. He said his current portfolio is “100% compliant.”

In terms of the right to repair, he said a relevant policy already existed.

“When repairs aren’t made up to a tenant’s standards, they can withhold their rent in an escrow account until the landlord fixes any of the issues,” he said.

Sadler said she had done so before while living in Kalamazoo County and was considering doing so at Waverly Place. But she said having the right to repair her home would be a simple solution and would mean necessary repairs could be made immediately.

Another local problem is the continued deterioration of Lansing’s aging housing stock, which everyone interviewed for this article mentioned as a pressing issue. Kost said it made absent landlords especially dangerous.

“Nothing is more dangerous than an absent landlord who has not invested in that property at all,” he said.

“We need the right to have someone come in and repair those things the landlord just doesn’t care about,” Sadler said.

As she looks forward, Sadler is considering moving to another apartment complex, but she worried it will have the same issues. She said she hopes city and state leadership will use the power they have to help people in her situation.

“You have to help the poor and the needy,” she said. “You’ll have them with you always.”