Decision point:
path to enactment
There are different paths to establishing eviction RTC. The path that will work for your jurisdiction depends on several factors: the political will of policymakers, the amount of data available vs. what is still needed, the support of key stakeholders, etc. The two main paths to enacting eviction RTC are legislative enactment and ballot initiative.
STAGE 3, CONCEPT 1 | Table of Contents
Path: Legislation
City Council ordinance / County Board ordinance / State Legislature bill
Pros
The most direct path: just need a sponsor
Community advocates may have closer ties to local policymakers than to ones at the state level
Cons
Can lose control of the law once it’s in the government’s hands: language can get drastically changed and you might wind up opposing your own proposal
Often have to focus more on governmental concerns like cost savings and less on the equity and other considerations that truly motivate the eviction RTC movement
Path: Voter Initiative
City / County / State ballot initiative
Pros
Generally allows your preferred ordinance language to go to voters directly
Limits (or in some places eliminates) ability for government to interfere
Can run a more grassroots campaign focused on issues of equity, justice, and power
Can lead to stronger organizing presence in the City
Precedent: San Francisco and Boulder
Cons
Process of gathering enough signatures can be long, expensive, and difficult to predict
May fight legal battles with government or opponent over the ballot language itself, or attempts to keep it off the ballot altogether, which often don’t happen until after all the signature gathering
May face well-funded opposition campaign (example: Denver (seeking to expand upon City’s enacted RTC ordinance); Multnomah County
Tips for Ballot Initiative Process
Ballotpedia has a page on cities that allow direct legislation via ballot initiatives, while the Initiative and Referendum Institute has a similar page for state-level initiatives.
PolicyLink and the NCCRC partnered to develop Housing Justice on the Ballot: Initiative Guide, which provides detailed information about the ballot initiative process. This Guide covers what eviction RTC has looked like when put to the voters.
Be aware that some states are considering passing laws that would severely restrict the state or local ballot initiative process. The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center tracks legislation of this nature.
Rules and laws around the legislative and ballot processes differ from place to place. And there may be legal limits on what a city or county is allowed to enact. These limits may affect the path you decide to take.
The NCCRC has compiled research on some legal obstacles to eviction RTC, and please contact us if you have questions. However, you should also speak with an attorney in your area who is familiar with these issues in your particular jurisdiction.
If you choose the legislative route, make sure you understand your legislature:
Legislators may have varying interests. For instance, in Connecticut, many legislators were also landlords, so RTC advocates approached the conversation with that in mind. However, don’t assume you know how they’ll vote, even if you think you know how their background would affect their vote. Have individual conversations with key legislators and find out what motivates them. For some this will be cost/benefit data; for others it will be details about how eviction RTC can help redress racial disparities, or something else entirely.
The legislative advocacy process can be arduous, energy-draining work that requires a lot of adaptability and education of legislators. Here are some guiding thoughts from a state-level organizer on the process:
“Make sure they don’t deal you out in the first few weeks – you need to have a legislative agenda that keeps you in the session for the whole of that session. Because if the legislature can ignore you, they will: there are so many other things, so if you voluntarily drop off or leave things out, they are moving on – it’s out of sight, out of mind …
Before, [our] legislature tended to say you all need to agree on one thing and come on African American Legislative Day (usually on MLK Day, when they’re not actually there…) and if you can’t agree, what are we supposed to help you with? So we set a few ground rules when we came into the legislature. Firstly, Black people are not a monolith and your policy is stronger by implementing and considering the lived experience of all Black and Brown people across the state – and here is our coalition that helps represent that. And then strategically, making sure we had a legislative agenda broad enough that they couldn’t deal us out – they had to deal with us.
Finally, remember that the legislative session isn’t done until e.g. the governor has signed, so once the session is over, you turn your focus to the governor and pester his people every single day.
The language I always use is that our focus was the prosperity of all [people in the state] and the protection and liberation of black lives – nobody could argue with that. It comes down to making sure you have a strategy where they can’t say e.g. this only impacts this amount of people, or we’ll deal with it in the next session. You need to show it’s critical and you have to deal with it right now. Even though we had the wind at our backs, with name and reputation, it wasn’t us sitting in those rooms getting this done – it was the average of 2,000 people emailing every day, that were signing in online and weighing in with their messages of pro or con that got it done. You need that mobilization piece, you need the stamina to get through the whole session and you really need a strategic agenda.”
You might want to “power map” the legislature to identify where there are opportunities for support and potential champions of the bill. To learn more about power mapping, consider the Housing Justice on the Ballot Guide, which covers the practice in more detail on page 34.
Consider when to bring in legislative allies. This is covered in Section 2.1.