Legislative Session Ends

By Brian French
Posted Monday, May 19, 2008

I just went to a Government Affairs Committee meeting this morning to get an overview of what the last minute finagling by our legislators did for the future of housing in our state. All in all I was pleased by the report we received by our representative, but also put on notice that there will be some things down the road that we will need to keep ourselves involved in. For one, the lawmakers are studying the possibility of creating a state wide rental registry for Landlords and their apartments. This in itself is a bees nest just waiting to be poked. As a landlord in Burlington and Winooski, I can attest to the fact that there are already costly registration fees that we pay to these cities. Adding another fee is only going to make it more expensive to tenants for their housing. When these fees are levied, most often the cost is passed down to the occupant of the apartment. It has to be because of the rising cost of taxes, insurance, registration fees and maintenance fees for these properties. It is getting more and more difficult to provide quality housing for the people that need it the most. The legislators should be aware of this before they get more government involved withour free enterprise system.