It was a rough legislative session for the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance coalition of organizers and advocates who work with tenants on their rights and housing accessibility.
Reno-based coordinator Ben Iness scored it at zero wins, with Republican Governor Joe Lombardo in the way.
“Meaningful, lasting, material wins for tenants for struggling Nevadans, hardworking Nevadans and families, I would say none,” he said at the beginning of our interview.
Many of the group’s priority bills did make it to the governor’s desk, but then he says “the hammer struck down, and there was no justice for tenants.”
The death of Assembly Bill 340 which would have revised provisions related to summary evictions was a particularly crushing blow to Iness.
In Nevada, he says, summary evictions which can remove a person from a rental property without a full trial are “very swift. It is punitive and it doesn’t make sense logically.”
Here, it is the tenant who must file a Tenant’s Affidavit in court to contest an eviction before the landlord files anything, making it uniquely unfavorable to tenants facing difficulties. Iness was hoping a more level playing field would finally be created in the Silver State.
“Predatory landlords exist, they're not all of them, but they do exist. And we should put protections to make sure that that behavior is prevented,” Iness also said, lamenting failed efforts to limit rental application fees and recurring hidden fees, as well as a sputtered drive to maintain COVID-era eviction protections for tenants awaiting rental assistance.
“If we can just divert the course, and have a meaningful system that can proactively identify evictions before they happen, help those tenants in crisis or need and simultaneously keep landlords whole, then we can prevent them from ever happening,” Iness said of his organization’s ultimate goals.
Iness understands it’s a long game though.
“Our goal is about education and empowerment … organizing with tenants so that they're part of this fight and this process. We aim to address the root causes of housing insecurity, as we make sure that every tenant has a place to call home. It goes without saying, sometimes, you know, you go blue in the face saying it so much, but that housing is a human right. That should be one of the first things that anyone has secured or guaranteed.”
In our interview to be featured in full in a future podcast episode, Iness called for more “boldness and braveness” in our leaders, at the state, county, city and local levels to help the cause of tenants, who make up more than 40% of the state’s population, rather than working in the interest of deep-pocketed developers and landlords.
“Our [housing] crisis is only worsening,” he said. “Governor Lombardo failed Nevada tenants with those vetoes. Until we start doing something different, because it's not a matter of market sensibilities or supply and demand, until we start looking at housing differently and start protecting housing then we're just waiting until the next crisis. We need to stop treating the symptoms, rather than the disease, ” he concluded.