Bozeman commission considers providing legal help to city’s renters

For Bozeman’s Amanda Schenderline, the threat of eviction changed everything. She remembers the night that a letter was taped to her apartment door and the dread that it brought in the morning. 

The problem, according to the 41-year-old single mother who moved from the Crow Indian Reservation, was that her landlord refused to add her father to the apartment’s lease and wanted him off the property. Another problem: Schenderline’s dad is also her babysitter, which she said allowed her to leave the apartment and earn money to take care of her 3-year-old son Claude, who is autistic and has special needs.

“It was either him or all of us,” Schenderline told Montana Free Press, explaining that her landlord threatened to evict the family of three within 24 hours after finding a decades-old felony on her dad’s criminal record. 

Fearful of homelessness, Schenderline said she complied with the letter. She said her dad moved into a camper on the streets of Bozeman, while she subsequently quit her job to take care of Claude and applied for government assistance to get by.

Leaders in the city’s tenant union say the messy situation could have had a much different outcome, and the family could have been kept together. 

Schenderline could have taken her eviction threat to a housing attorney who specializes in landlord-tenant negotiations, according to Olive Nakano Sohn, a leader in Bozeman Tenants United. Sohn said these types of threats can often be defused by attorneys, and the city of Bozeman should fund a legal program for situations just like these. 

“We cannot afford to have more children have their lives upturned in this community,” Sohn told MTFP, adding that Bozeman Tenants United has been working to establish what’s known as a tenant-right-to-counsel program in the city for more than a year. 

Bozeman city commissioners overwhelmingly supported the initiative at a commission meeting earlier this month and directed city staff to move forward and create a broad framework for such a program. The work session lasted for more than four hours and included public testimony on both sides of the issue. 

Members of the tenants’ union filled the commission chambers to support the program and celebrated the meeting as a win for their organization. 

Deputy Mayor Joey Morrison campaigned on affordable housing issues and renters’ rights in Bozeman’s 2023 mayoral election. Morrison was endorsed by Bozeman Tenants United and told those gathered at the recent commission meeting that providing attorneys for Bozeman renters has been a “priority and focus” of his since taking office. 

“The goal of the program to me is housing stability,” Morrison said, adding that he’d advocate for “full representation” of tenants by the city, essentially covering the entire cost for the legal representation of renters in eviction cases.

“This is not about being anti-landlord or attacking landlords,” Morrison said.

However, just how much money the program would require and what access to legal services it would actually provide renters in Bozeman are still up for debate. 

Possibilities include hiring full-time legal counsel and support staff to run the program, establishing a formal mediation process for tenants and landlords, and funding education to better help tenants prepare to represent themselves in court, according to Anna Saverud, the city’s chief civil attorney. 

“If the goal is to reduce numbers of evictions, increase housing stability and people staying in their homes, or decrease the disruption of having to move somewhere else, these all have amazing results,” Saverud told the commission.

Five states and 19 major cities in the United States have established tenants’ rights to counsel, Saverud said, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado. Each of those has shown a reduction in homelessness that can be attributed to the program. 

Data provided by the city attorney’s office showed 123 evictions in Bozeman last year. The same data showed that just 32 tenants were able to file the necessary legal paperwork to challenge those evictions in court, and only four were represented by professional legal counsel. 

Compounding the issue, Saverud said, is that Gallatin County requires landlords to hire attorneys during eviction cases, but only a fraction of tenants can afford to do the same. 

Because more than half of Bozeman’s population rents, a tenant-right-to-counsel program could benefit the majority of people in the city, according to Amy Hall, an attorney who specializes in housing law for the Montana Legal Services Association.

Hall told MTFP that tenant lawyers can identify legal mistakes made by landlords, help craft payment plans for folks who have missed rent and speak the same language as judges. 

“People who aren’t familiar with the court system don’t speak that language,” Hall said, estimating that over 90% of eviction cases she handles are resolved by an agreement between the tenant and landlord. 

“Research shows that it makes a huge difference in so many ways,” Hall said. “It lowers the number of people who use homeless shelters, who use the emergency room, and it affects childcare.”

Hall said her team of attorneys provided Bozeman Tenants United with a sample budget outlining the cost of representation for tenant legal services in the city.

Ben Finegan, a leader in Bozeman Tenants United, told MTFP that he’d expect the cost to be roughly $300,000 a year to help the most vulnerable of Bozeman’s renters, which he described as families with young children, and that about $500,000 would be required to cover every tenant in the city.

Bozeman Mayor Terry Cunningham told the commission that he’d like to consider applying for federal grants to help fund the program and minimize potential tax increases. 

City manager Chuck Winn said he expects to hold information gathering sessions with the public on the proposed program this summer before bringing it to a vote before the commission in the fall.

If the program is funded, Bozeman would be the first city in Montana to guarantee tenants’ right to counsel. Saverud said the city has received more than 120 public comments on the program, most expressing “overwhelming support.”

However, several Montana landlords who spoke at the recent meeting cautioned that rents could rise if the program adds more taxes to their yearly operating costs. 

Bozeman’s Rob Gregoire told MTFP he owns two duplexes in the city’s fast-growing western suburbs and said he’s rented them for below-market rates for the past 22 years. 

The retired electrical engineer is concerned that establishing a city-funded legal counsel will increase his property taxes and require him to pass the costs along to his renters. He also wonders if renters could use public dollars to sue their landlords over “minor grievances” rather than major problems. 

“Right now, it’s advertised as just for evictions and more specifically for evictions of families, and that’s probably OK,” Gregoire said.

Gregoire said he’s been able to work with tenants in the past who struggle to pay rent, and in one case, a tenant who had been mugged and had her money stolen. 

“I think most private landlords will try to work with somebody experiencing a problem, but at some point you have to cut your losses,” Gregoire said, adding that statistics provided by the city attorney’s office show most evictions in Bozeman are related to unpaid rent.

For every renter that is behind on rent, there’s a landlord struggling to pay a mortgage, Gregoire said. “The point is, you gotta pay the rent,” he said.

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