Among the more common concerns shared by many tenants facing housing instability is unit conditions and limited affordable alternative housing options. As a result, our staff are frequently asked why their landlord can file for eviction in situations where there are lacking repairs or ongoing building code violations.

Unit Conditions and Eviction
Among tenants seeking services from the Tenant Resource Center, nearly 1 in 5 of tenants with questions about eviction also have questions about repairs, building inspections, or withholding rent. While it may seem counterintuitive to many, withholding rent due to repair issues or code violations is incredibly risky.

In Wisconsin, the law provides little detail for when a tenant is allowed to reduce the amount of rent they pay when a landlord has failed to complete repairs that impact the health or safety of the tenant. Instead, there is only a blanket prohibition on tenants withholding the full amount of their rent and no details for how to determine what amount, if any, should be withheld. This lack of clarity often means that any disputes over unit conditions and withheld rents are resolved in front of a judge and often in an eviction proceeding.

Rent Abatement Procedures
A few municipalities in Wisconsin have filled the gap left state law by enacting a rent abatement procedure that outlines the steps for tenants, landlords, and judges in handling these issues. In the City of Madison, for example, tenants can report building code violations to Building Inspection in the event their landlord has failed to remedy issues in a timely manner. Generally, a building inspector will conduct a physical inspection of the premises to determine what, if any, code violations are present. From there, they will typically provide the landlord with a list of issues and a deadline by which repairs must be made. In the event repairs are not made in a timely manner, a tenant may be entitled to a hearing where the landlord could be ordered to abate rent based on a chart codified in the ordinances.

This clarity in both expectations for landlords and procedure for tenants helps reduce the lack of certainty for both sides in how to resolve issues, while also providing clearer protections for tenants in seeking better unit conditions.

Rent Abatement and Financial Assistance
However, this past year has seen an increase in the number of tenants seeking financial assistance through the EDDP who either 1) have recently received a rent abatement award or 2) are currently in the process of seeking rent abatement.

In processing rental assistance, this scenario presents some unique challenges. For most of the tenants applying for assistance through the EDDP, there’s an active eviction filing for nonpayment of rent. In order to resolve the matter, both tenants and landlords are often seeking payments of back-owed rent as quickly as possible. At the same time, gathering documents related to rent abatement determinations has proven to be a challenge, as many landlords are unwilling to provide these documents.

Even in situations where we receive rent abatement documents in a timely manner, determining the amount of financial assistance for a household can prove difficult, as the determination often doesn’t reflect on a landlord’s rent ledger and identifying the eligible balance can be time-consuming.

Perhaps the most challenging situations are those when we’ve provided financial assistance to a household, but later rent abatement has been awarded to the household. In these situations, both tenants and landlords are unclear about whether any portion of the financial assistance must be returned to the program, or should be paid out to the household as instructed. Further complicating this, the period of assistance provided might only partially overlap the period of the rent abatement determination.

However, the worst of these situations stems from times where a landlord rushes through the eviction process seemingly with knowledge that a rent abatement process is imminent. In this past year, we’ve encountered situations where this appears to be the case. In one such case, a tenant had made partial payments along the way, but was unable to pay their full rent over a period of a few months. At the same time, the tenant reported that their landlord seemingly didn’t care about their inability to pay until the tenant contacted the building inspector due to some persistent repair issues that were ignored. Nearly a week after the first eviction hearing in the case, the tenant’s unit address appeared on the list of addresses eligible for abatement.