As rent prices continue to climb in New Hampshire, a new law aims to cut down on the extra costs — for background checks, application fees and more — that are making things even more expensive for prospective tenants.
The new law requires landlords to provide justification for any fees they charge beyond the price of rent and a security deposit, and it requires landlords to return any excess costs without documentation back to the tenant.
The policy aims to address what’s become a familiar situation to many renters: You apply for one apartment, get charged $50 for an application fee and don’t get approved. You apply for another, fork over another $50 for the application fee and even more for a background check. In the state’s competitive rental market, those costs can quickly add up.
When drafting the bill, Rep. Ellen Read said she learned that just searching for an apartment could cost people hundreds of dollars, especially if they apply to multiple rentals. Read, a Democrat representing Newmarket and Newfields, said she also heard of people being asked to pay fees for each adult applying to live in an apartment.
“It prevents the kind of the shadier landlords creating a whole new revenue stream out of just putting ads up and raking in the applications of desperate people,” she said.
Read said the new law doesn't restrict how much a landlord can charge but makes the process a little more transparent.
She hopes it will be helpful to tenants who are often applying to multiple units at a time, given the state’s low vacancy rate.
“Obviously you have to apply to a lot of units in that kind of market before you find even one,” Read said.
The policy change comes as a new report from New Hampshire Housing confirms that the housing market remains tight — and expensive.
Their latest Residential Rental Cost Survey shows that there’s a big gap between what someone needs to earn to afford an apartment, and what people are actually making. For example, the report found that someone needs to make around $73,000 to afford a two-bedroom apartment in New Hampshire, but the estimated median renter income in the state is close to $57,000.
The report also found that only 13% of two-bedrooms available to rent in the state are considered affordable. And since 2015, according to the report, all rental units have gone up in price by about 35%.
The New Hampshire Housing report also revealed that many workers in high-demand occupations, like firefighters and nursing assistants, do not make enough to afford a one-bedroom apartment, while many electricians and public school teachers can’t afford a two bedroom.
“The wages have gone up but it doesn't appear that they're keeping pace with the amount of increase in the cost of rentals,” said Rep. Kathy Staub, a Democrat from Manchester who has been organizing around housing advocacy issues for years.
Staub said policymakers need to take more urgent action to address the state’s housing crisis. She said she is helping to form a committee on disability and housing, and supported the law to restrict rental fees as well as another law that protects tenants who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.
As she thinks of the people most affected by New Hampshire’s affordable housing shortage, Staub said she recalls a friend who was an electrician, whose body was worn down from years of manual labor. He retired early after his knees gave out, she said, and experienced a period of homelessness when his apartment caught fire.
“We make excuses for why people are homeless, ‘They make bad choices in their life,’” Staub said. “Getting old is not a choice.”
Read, who brought forward the law to curb rental fees, said she knows that policy alone isn't going to fix New Hampshire’s rental landscape. But she hopes the new law will help deter landlords from engaging in predatory application practices.
“As awful as that practice is, [the bill] prevents people who are just looking for a roof over their heads from having to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars just looking, not even moving in, but just looking,” Read said. “So this basically guarantees that you will get anything in excess of what the actual expense was back within 30 days.”
