Tenant law changes expands the rights of landlords

Students who rent or lease property may have even less protection from their landlords in the fall.

While the Landlord Tenant Law Changes, passed by the N.C. General Assembly in June, offers some benefits for tenants, the net effect of the law has drawn concerns from some students.

The law increases the authority of landlords to evict tenants or deduct from their security deposits. It also outlines situations when landlords can appropriate abandoned personal property.

Dorothy Bernholz, director of Student Legal Services at UNC, said despite attempting to take a balanced approach to revising pre-existing legislation, as a whole it is more landlord-friendly.

“In some respects it clarifies permitted uses of the deposit,” she said. “In other cases it eliminates some things that were permitted uses like, for example, outstanding electric bills, so it sort of cuts both ways.”

She said a problem that tenants might face is a provision that allows landlords to remove tenants even after collecting partial rent payments, which under past law would have forestalled their eviction.

The changes were mentioned at a Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce meeting, which focused on the effects of actions taken by the N.C. General Assembly on small businesses during its 2012 short session.

Mark Zimmerman, vice-chairman of the legislative committee of the N.C. Association of Realtors, said the law, which represents the first revision of landlord/tenant law in the state since the 1970s, helps local small business real estate agencies that let properties.

“These are real issues for people who are in that business, and this legislation should help make a little more of a level playing field than it had been,” Zimmerman said.

The law passed both houses of the N.C. General Assembly unanimously and was signed into law by Gov. Bev Perdue June 11.

Under new law, tenants’ security deposits, which generally amount to about one month’s rent in the Chapel Hill area, may now be accessed by landlords to pay for cleaning, unpaid water and sewage utilities, damages and court fees.

Students have expressed mixed reactions towards the new law.

Senior Meredith Sherrod, an elementary education major who used to work at the Chapel Ridge apartment complex, said she thought the law was fair.

“With my apartment in Chapel Ridge, I left it in the condition that I found it, and having to inspect people’s apartments there, I can certainly appreciate other people doing the same thing,” she said. “It takes a lot of money to repair things that are damaged in an apartment.”

But junior Jordan Hale, a political science major, expressed concern with the law.

“Honestly, I think anything that streamlines the process of tenant eviction is kind of a bad thing,” he said. “It does make me a little wary about living in an apartment.”

But despite the changes, Bernholz said it is unlikely that the new legislation will have much of an effect on how often students rent property in Chapel Hill.

“I think it’s a pretty captive market. Students want to live in private housing off-campus,” she said.

Contact the State & National Editor at state@dailytarheel.com.