HARTFORD — State Senator Matt Lesser (D-Middletown) today voted for a bill that strengthens tenant protections by requiring nonresident landlords to register with municipalities and increases penalties for repeat building and fire code violations.

Senate Bill 274, “AN ACT CONCERNING NONRESIDENT LANDLORD REGISTRATION AND INCREASING PENALTIES FOR REPEAT BUILDING AND FIRE CODE VIOLATIONS,” passed the Senate on a purely partisan 24-10 vote and now heads to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Sen. Lesser’s vote in support of the bill comes just months after a large apartment complex in Rocky Hill was evacuated after pipes froze and broke, resulting in a loss of water and heat to hundreds of residents; the building’s absentee landlord,  J.R.K. Property Holdings and J.R.K. Residential Group, had a history of maintenance problems at the complex.

“I represent the town of Rocky Hill, and this winter, we saw in one exceptionally large complex the culmination of years of underinvestment from an out-of-state, private equity act landlord. The building lost heat and hot water, and due to the scale of the devastation, we had, by some counts, about a thousand people displaced,” Sen. Lesser said in the Senate chamber. “It was very difficult to track down the owners, to get in contact with them, and the only reason they were able to do so expeditiously was that the owner had been involved in prior litigation with the town. We need more tools to track this. Small and medium-sized towns like Rocky Hill really struggle to hold folks accountable for repeat violations of building and fire codes. We saw the Rocky Hill Town Council — led by Mayor Allan Smith, and on a bipartisan basis — come and testify in support of this legislation, because they see it  as being directly helpful for combating this particular landlord and holding them accountable and for dealing with similar situations should they arise in the future.”

Senate Bill 274 makes registration mandatory for larger municipalities, requires landlords to provide current residential addresses and identifying information, and ensures that service of a compliance order to that address constitutes valid legal notice.

Under current law, municipalities may ask nonresident property owners to register their contact information, but are not required to. That gap allows absentee landlords, particularly those who own property through corporate entities, to remain difficult to identify and contact when code violations arise.
The bill also increases penalties for repeat violations of the State Building Code and State Fire Safety Code. For a first offense, landlords face fines between $200 and $1,000, imprisonment of up to six months, or both. Repeat offenders face fines of up to $2,000 for building code violations and up to $1,000 for fire code violations, with imprisonment of up to six months also available as a penalty.

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