Idaho Senate's "Rental Fee Limit" bill held in committee

BOISE, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — State lawmakers are looking to put new rules in place when it comes to rental application fees for homes and apartments.

“What this bill does is simply it makes a change where landlords are only allowed to charge rental applicants 2 fees at a time, rather than charging everyone who applies,” says District 16 State Senator Alison Rabe.

Senate bill 1042aa, also known as the “rental applications, fee and limit bill,” passed the senate last month. Those against the bill argued it’s government overreach, but the sponsor, Senator Rabe, says that this proposal came out of conversations with some of the largest landlord associations in the state who helped draft the language.

“Many of us don’t like telling people what to do but the businesses are coming to us asking us to codify what they’re already doing,” says Rabe.

According to the bill’s statement of purpose, the property owner or managers must actually run a background check in order to charge an application fee, and a rental must be available or expected to be available with 60 days unless the tenants agree otherwise.

“My Management” is a company that owns various rental properties in the Magic Valley, who supports this proposal.

“In my personal experience of having worked in this industry for a long time, i think there is a lot of room for vulnerable people to be taken advantage of,” says Briten Perron.

Briten Perron is the company’s asset manager. He says he’s left jobs before because of predatory application fees and believes this bill will make agencies be more honest and ethical.

“When you start an application on our website, before it even ask for a single thing, it has a list of things that says, ‘hey, if you have any of this going on, you may not even pass,’ and this one of those things the bill is looking to address -- to be transparent about what is going to qualify people or disqualify them,” says Perron.

The house business committee discussed the measure Wednesday, but some people who testified argued that parts of the bill’s language are not clear. At the end of the hearing, lawmakers called for a substitute motion to hold the bill in committee and requested the sponsors re-draft a new bill.

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