Protesters demand lower rent as Michigan lawmakers ready rent overhaul

Lansing — Protesters gathered on the Capitol lawn in simmering heat Tuesday to demand affordable rental costs in Michigan, which had the ninth largest year-over-year rent increase as of August in the United States.

Joining them were several lawmakers poised to introduce this fall a “Rental Bill of Rights,” as well as laws governing migrant worker housing and a repeal of a 35-year-old statewide ban on rent control.

The Tuesday rally organized by The Rent is Too Damn High Coalition was meant to build solidarity among renters facing rising costs and worsening living conditions at rentals across the state, organizers said.

“We’re fighting against decades of misinformation and propaganda from special interest groups that profit from exploiting this basic human necessity,” said Sara Huerta Long, a Rent is Too Damn High organizer from Lansing.

Michigan’s average rent grew year-over-year by about 8.6% as of August, according to Rent.com. The Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area experienced the largest year-over-year increase among metro areas with a 4.7% increase from August, according to the site.

Amy Brock, a Grand Rapids renter, said her rent for a studio built in 1970 increased about 40% over the past three years and now costs $1,100 a month.

“Housing is a human right,” Brock said. “As humans, we need access to food, water and shelter to survive.”

After the rally, Democratic lawmakers said the repeal of the statewide rent control ban has not yet been introduced but they expect to introduce it this fall. Without the ban in place, “rent stabilization” decisions would be left to local communities that could adjust requirements based on economic and geographic circumstances, said Rep. Carrie Rheingans, an Ann Arbor Democrat and longtime renter.

Rheingans said some local governments are asking for the ability to choose to pass some rent stabilization measures.

“It would not force them to do it,” Rheingans said. “They can choose whether they want to. There’s plenty of municipalities in our state that actually wouldn’t need to stabilize their rent because its already affordable to working people in that community.”

The Rental Bill of Rights, modeled after similar legislation in Minnesota, would include a wide range of bills including a right of first refusal, right to legal counsel, a “safe and livable” standard, relocation pay if forced out of housing, eviction expungement and just cause requirements for evictions.

“Having the responsibility to provide someone shelter is enormous, because it's not just shelter,” said Rep. Emily Dievendorf, D-Lansing, who is spearheading the rental rights package. “It’s heat. It's cooling. It's water. It’s the ability to cook food. When your shelter is in danger, then it really just endangers your health and safety overall.”

Without seeing the details of the legislation, it's difficult to say which ones would be "workable" and which detrimental to Michigan's overall housing availability, said Jarrett Skorup, vice president for communications and marketing at the free-market-oriented Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland. Broadly speaking, an increased burden of regulation and liability would be detrimental, he said.

"Landlords want reliable tenants in their buildings or on their properties," Skorup said. "Anything you do to make that more difficult — where they cannot get rid of a tenant, where they cannot do a criminal background check — that is going to drive up costs.”

Skorup dismissed the idea that rent control would help Michigan's housing market, noting most economists see it as having a long-term negative effect on low-income renters.

"Overall, it just kills investment and drives up rental cost,” he said.

Dievendorf argued none of the new legislation would harm landlords who were already doing the right thing.

Both Dievendorf and Rheingans pointed to an August letter sent to the Biden administration and signed by about 30 economists who concluded “well-crafted policies” would ensure the “well-being of renters, promotes affordability, mitigates future inflationary episodes and maintains landlords’ ability to receive a fair and reasonable return on their investment.”

The libertarian Cato Institute criticized the letter, arguing it looked at rental costs in isolation rather than with a view of the overall impact rent control has on other areas of the market. Rent control can drive up costs in housing exempted from the limits, leading to an overall increase in rent costs, the institute said.

“Perhaps counter‐intuitively, by shifting more demand into the uncontrolled sector, rent controls can sometimes drive‐up underlying market rents overall, then, even if they reduce rents among the controlled properties,” Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne wrote.

eleblanc@detroitnews.com