Democrats tee up eviction reform Lombardo vetoed two years ago

Upon returning home to Las Vegas from a trip from Los Angeles, Lousetta Keyes found a 7-day “pay rent or quit” paper eviction notice taped to her apartment front door.

There wasn’t anything Keyes could do since it was late at night, she told state lawmakers at  Wednesday’s Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing as she recounted the recent experience.   

After a restless night spent worrying about why she was facing eviction, she went to her rental office first thing in the morning. That’s when she was told the notices stemmed from being short $32 on rent. Keyes said because of surprise “junk fees” attached to her monthly rental payment, she had no idea she had an outstanding amount. Let alone a number so little.

Instead of going through a court process to seek an eviction for unpaid rent, Nevada’s summary eviction process requires tenants be the first to file with the court after a 7-day notice is placed on their door. 

The basic notice template is easily accessible online to landlords and “all they have to do is hit print,” Keyes said. 

“They put a 7-day notice on my door for $32,” she said. “That’s not fair. If they had to file with the court they would have had to call me and ask why my rent was short.”

Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed legislation in 2023 that would have reformed Nevada’s eviction laws, considered some of the nation’s most tenant-hostile. The bill was among numerous tenant protection and eviction protection bills he vetoed. 

Assembly Bill 283 would once again seek to restructure the process for filing an eviction. 

Democratic Assemblymember Max Carter, the bill’s sponsor, said he not only wanted to give eviction reform another chance. He also wants to give Lombardo a “second chance to do what’s right for Nevadans, all Nevadans, not just corporate landlords.”

Nevada has a “summary” eviction process that allows landlords to evict tenants within days unless the tenant files a challenge to the eviction in court. That is the opposite of most states, where landlords must first file with a court to execute an eviction.

Lombardo’s veto message on the summary eviction bill said the legislation would “impose additional and unnecessary delays” and costs “make our summary eviction process more time-consuming” on property owners.

The bill is about rebalanding a lopsided system, Carter said while presenting his legislation to the committee Wednesday.

“If you’ve ever attended eviction court, and Las Vegas Justice Court in particular, it is so tilted against tenants that it’s ridiculous,” Carter said. “It’s shameful to watch. We need to do something to restore the balance.”

AB 283 was one of two bills heard Wednesday by the Assembly Judiciary Committee seeking to address the impact of Nevada’s eviction system.  

Assembly Bill 201 seeks to expand efforts to automatically seal eviction records. 

“These records can negatively impact credit scores making it difficult to secure rental housing, employment and even access to loans,” said Democratic Assemblymember Erica Roth, the bill’s sponsor. “Even when the outcome of an eviction favors a tenant, a single eviction record can severely limit a person’s ability to find safe and affordable housing, trapping them in a cycle of homelessness or substandard living conditions.”

Members of the Housing Justice Alliance, which include organizations such as Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Make the Road Nevada and ACLU of Nevada, called on lawmakers to support both bills. 

“With our cost of living crisis and lack of tenant protections, we have an eviction-to-unhoused pipeline,” said Ben Iness, the coalition coordinator for the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance. These bills are “an important step to remedy that.”

Real estate and property management groups opposed both bills. 

“I think changing the process is not going to stop evictions from happening,” John Sande, a lobbyist for the Nevada State Apartment Association said in opposition to AB 283. “The cause of eviction is the cost of housing.” 

Shifting to the landlord

There were at least 85,000 summary eviction cases filed last year in Nevada, said Jonathan Norman, the advocacy, outreach and policy director for the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers.

But that figure  “does not account for the number of cases where somebody receives a notice but the case does not proceed,” he said.

The current law requiring tenants to file an answer to an eviction notice with the court — instead of having the landlords file with the court first —  not only creates a burdensome process for renters. It also prevents the state from assessing the full scope of the eviction crisis.

AB 283 would require landlords to file with the court after giving tenants a 7-day notice. Once the landlord filed with the court, the tenant would then have 7 judicial days – days the court is open – to respond. 

If a tenant responds to the notice before those 7 days are up, a court hearing is scheduled. But if the tenant doesn’t respond to the court notice, an eviction is granted. 

“The big shifts are when the landlord files a complaint and the tenant has a period to respond,” Norman said. 

The bill, he added, would bring the state in accordance with “every civil process in the United States of America.”

“This is the only process where a tenant has to initiate the lawsuit against themselves,” he said. “I just think of how absurd that sounds.”

Republican Assemblyman Toby Yurek asked whether the bill would create unintended consequences by driving small landlords out of the housing market. 

“You mentioned corporate rights landlords that certainly could absorb some of these costs that are going to be and delays that are going to incur with this process or this policy choice,” he said. “My concern is for smaller landlords.”

Carter said that in the states where landlords, not tenants, have to make the eviction filing, “this isn’t an onerous burden on small landlords.”

‘Equal footing’

Though an eviction happens in a single moment, “the consequences last for years,” said Norman with the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers. 

Nevada law already allows tenants to petition a court to seal an eviction record. AB 201 would seek to further protect renters from the economic onus of having a Nevada eviction on their record.

The bill allows for court records to be automatically sealed one year after the eviction is granted or when a case is dismissed. 

“If someone has been unlawfully evicted, they shouldn’t have to face barriers to getting back on their feet and into housing,” Roth said. “We are in a housing crisis and experiencing record numbers of people facing homelessness. We are seeing families on the verge of eviction every single month.”

Experiencing an eviction and facing homelessness is already traumatic enough for people, Roth said.

Landlords could oppose the records being sealed. If they don’t, the record would be automatically sealed, Norman said. 

Landlords still have other tools, such as income requirements, to determine whether to rent to a tenant, he added. 

Republican Assemblymember Lisa Cole asked about how the bill would address tenants who receive more than one eviction over several years. She proposed amending the bill to include “a limit where no more than two times can a record be sealed in five years.”

Norman said they have had clients who have faced nine evictions in less than two years simply because “landlords will (issue) multiple evictions within the same month.” 

The committee didn’t take action on either bill.