Rental bill passage shows Idaho House is on the side of landlords, renters on their own
One thing became clear Monday: If you’re a renter, most of the Idaho House does not care very much about you. The House listens to landlords — many of its members are landlords — and if you are a prospective renter who is being cheated by unscrupulous landlords, the market will sort it out.
The Idaho House voted 54-14 for House Bill 442, which would ban cities from regulating application fees and other peripheral fees in the rental market. Only Boise currently has such regulations, pushed by council member Lisa Sánchez — and they’re working well.
Those regulations recognize a simple truth the House chose to ignore: A landlord who accepts 60 application fees for a single opening is obviously behaving abusively. The prospective tenants have no way of knowing how many others are applying. In point of fact, they have no way of knowing when they pay the fee that there is a place to rent at all.
Indeed, if the bill proceeds through the Senate and is signed by the governor, the law will protect a landlord who accepts application fees even if they have no unit for rent now or in the foreseeable future — a practice indistinguishable from that of a con artist.
Remarkably, the proponents of the bill did not even pretend that this does not occur.
“Yes, we have bad players,” said Rep. Joe Palmer, R-Meridian.
But that, he claimed, is no justification for local control.
“Since when do we no longer trust our consumers and businesses?” he said.
We don’t trust that consumers will never shoplift, so there are laws against shoplifting. We don’t trust that businesses will never embezzle funds, so there are laws against embezzlement. But when it comes to prospective renters — people with limited funds, desperate for a place to live, with little information about the company they’re sending a fee to — you just have to trust the market.
Why the asymmetry? One reason is self-interest.
About a quarter of House members declared conflicts of interest — they own or manage rental properties, and the bill would protect their ability to profit — but voted on the bill anyway because legislative corruption is not taken seriously in Idaho.
Another reason, which Palmer denied, is a longstanding attack on local control exercised by cities and counties. From forbidding plastic bag bans to tight statewide regulation of liquor licenses to bans on non-existent critical race theory, the Legislature has long sought to exert ever-greater control over local decisions.
That’s particularly true when it comes to Boise, Idaho’s biggest population center. The Republican-dominated Legislature has written rules targeted to change its election system, and now to overrule sensible regulations that only Boise had.
So if you’re a renter, the Legislature doesn’t spend much time thinking about you. But if you’re a Boise renter, you’ve got a target on your back.
This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 1:27 PM.