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Protecting tenants in Fayetteville

Posted Fri, 01/30/2009 - 13:26

image credit: umjanedoan
Last night at the Council's Agenda Session, Mayor Jordan brought an ordinance forward to protect tenants from delinquent landlords.
It's pretty simple. The way it currently works, if an account is delinquent, it gets shut off by the City Water Deparment. Here's the catch: if the landlord is responsible for the bill, then the tenant's water gets cut off even though they aren't responsible for paying it.
The amendment brought forward by Mayor Jordan changes that. It will allow the city to cut the water off at other properties the landlord owns. In a situation like above, this allows the city to cut off water to the landlord's primary residence instead of his tenant's residence.
Even though I didn't make a big deal about tenants' rights in my campaign, they did come up a time or two, and I maintained that we needed to do more to support tenants' rights. This ordinance is a great example of that, and kudos to Mayor Jordan to taking leadership on this issue.