Arkansas has the nation’s weakest laws on tenants’ rights and in some cases even criminalizes renters.  State law puts those who pay rent – most often the lower income residents in Arkansas – at a disadvantage in dealing with their landlords.

Here are the two biggest reasons that’s true:

1. We’re the only state that maintains a criminal “failure to vacate” law, which allows landlords to seek prosecution of those who don’t pay their rent.  In other words, you can go to jail for debt. In these cases, the alleged perpetrator, the tenant, must pay the rent whether he pleads guilty or not guilty. The alleged victim of the crime, the landlord, sets the amount owed – not the court. That’s not how it works in most criminal cases.
2. We’re the only state without a requirement for an “implied warranty of liability.” All other states and D.C. have requirements that landlords must ensure that the home has working electricity, plumbing, heating and running water, for example. We don’t.

Legislation that would have remedied this – House Bill 1486 by Rep. Greg Leding – failed to make it out of committee in the session that just ended. It failed despite 2012 recommendations from a state commission that included representatives of tenants, landlords, property owners and experts on landlord-tenant law in Arkansas and other states. And despite circuit court rulings, including one in Pulaski County at the start of the session, that have found the “failure to vacate” law to be unconstitutional.

Not all landlords are looking to abuse their privilege, and not all renters are good tenants. But the law shouldn’t grant one an advantage over the other. One-third of Arkansans live in rental housing. It’s time we ensured they’re not the least-protected tenants in the nation.

For more information, here is the report on the 2012 recommendations from the Non-Legislative Commission on the Study of Landlord-Tenant Laws. A recent article in The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the criminal justice system, featured Arkansas landlord-tenant laws. Thanks to the League of Women Voters of Washington County for hosting a forum on this subject in Fayetteville last week.