The Housing-Consumer Protection Subcommittee advanced a sweeping package of tenant-protection bills — covering payment methods, maintenance fees, eviction defenses, rent-increase notice, domestic violence protections, and attorney fee caps — while carrying over two contested bills (rental application transparency and algorithmic pricing disclosure) to 2027 and the Housing Commission respectively. The most divided votes were on HB1005 (7-3), HB519 (6-3), HB281 (6-3), and HB1078 (5-4), reflecting sustained landlord-industry resistance to expanding tenant rights.
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Aaron Corman (Realtors) argued that 'Roman numeral 3' — material noncompliance of the lease — was too vague and broad and requested clarification that tenants must continue paying ongoing rent during the case. Larissa Zaire (Legal Aid Justice Center) countered that requiring ongoing rent payment into court escrow is 'practically unworkable' and that tenants raising other good-faith defenses face no such requirement. Delegate Carlson maintained the bill only addressed the prerequisite for raising an existing statutory defense, not the defense itself.
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“And it lists out some examples of that. Right. But that's another one where Romanet 3 is not in italics on my copyright. So that's existing law. Right. But now what we're doing is striking out the requirement for them to bring any money or all money due and owing in order to raise the the defense. So the defense is going to be available on a much broader basis. So the trade off you'd want for that would be to get to use those terms. I'm just trying to understand why we're messing with parts of the bill that aren't. We understand the defense is important and we understand the material health, life and safety and the rodent infestation and the other things that are listed. And”
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Sign in to subscribeJanuary 29 meeting of the General Law's Housing and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. Meeting to order. We have 19 bills on our docket this afternoon and everywhere, everyone in the audience, everyone in the committee has two other places they're also supposed to be. So we're going to do our best. We're going to move through this as quickly as we can, but also wanting to make sure that we give everybody opportunity to get a fair hearing and make sure that their wishes about their bills are heard. I'm going to say that this is landlord tenant docket day, right? If you're watching the docket, you've probably noticed a theme. There are 20 landlord tenant bills and there are 20 very good ideas. And we're not likely to be able to do 20 different things all this year right away to completely upend landlord tenant law in Virginia. So it's nothing personal if we can't do everything that everybody wants to do right away right now. And so I just hope that everybody will bear that in mind. There's a lot that we want to get to and a lot that we want to hear about. We're at the beginning…
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