HARTFORD -- Housing advocates and state legislators on Tuesday kicked off another state-level fight to prohibit some landlords from kicking out tenants without "just cause" when their leases are up.
That legislative move was announced at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford during a Tuesday morning press conference. Dozens of activists, renters, and advocacy groups joined Bridgeport State Rep. Antonio Felipe and New London State Sen. Martha Marx -- both Democrats and co-chairs of the Housing Committee -- to launch the campaign.
"Tenants are not treated as people. We are treated as removable objects. That is not housing; that is extraction. That is violence dressed up in legal language," said Sun Queen, a New Haven housing activist, tenant, organizer, and poet who spoke up at Tuesday's presser.
Queen said that, after 14 years of "building a life inside the same apartment, I received a notice to quit," a pre-eviction legal notice. "Fourteen years of memories, stability, community, reduced to a piece of paper telling me to disappear. Not because I destroyed the property, not because I stopped paying rent, not because I endangered anyone. But because the system says a landlord can erase a life with paperwork."
Queen described housing as being treated like "stock portfolios rather than human survival." As someone who works with unhoused people, Queen said that she sees what happens after eviction. "People do not just find somewhere to go. There is nowhere to go. Where then shall we go? Shelters are full. Affordable housing isn't affordable. People end up in cars, motels, couch-surfing, or outside."
Just-cause eviction protections, Queen said, would require landlords to have a "real reason to remove someone from their home" -- rather than profit, speculation, or because "someone with more money has appeared."
This is the fourth year in a row that state legislators are trying to pass just-cause eviction legislation. In 2025, the bill died before reaching the House for a vote.
A bill has not yet been introduced this legislative session. CT Tenants Union Vice President Luke Melonakos told the Independent that they are expecting a bill number, providing some language and a tracking process, later on Tuesday or Wednesday. Melonakos said that as of Tuesday, he had learned it would be a Senate bill this year.
Melonakos said that this session's bill will be no different from last session's bill.
On Feb. 10, members of the Housing Committee voted 13-6 for the concept to be raised.
Currently, landlords in Connecticut are able to choose not to renew most tenants' leases for any reason. This is considered a no-fault or lapse-of-time eviction.
If passed, the protections that housing advocates are pushing for would mean that a landlord can't evict a tenant without "just cause." Just cause includes nonpayment of rent, lease violations, being a nuisance to other tenants, and the tenant not agreeing to a fair rent increase.
Just-cause eviction protections are already in place for tenants who are 62 and over or who are disabled and live in complexes with five or more units.
The bill introduced in 2025 would have extended these protections to tenants who have rented a home for at least 13 months and live in a building or complex with at least five units. The bill also proposed that, under certain grounds, a landlord would be able to evict a tenant if the landlord or a family member would use the unit as their own principal residence.
"Despite fearmongering, Just Cause does not impact other for-cause grounds for eviction including, for example, nonpayment of rent, lease violations, or nuisance," the CT Tenants Union wrote in a Friday press release. "Just Cause would also protect tenants from landlords who use no-fault evictions to gentrify complexes -- thereby eroding existing affordable housing at a faster rate than new housing can be built -- or to intimidate, retaliate, or discriminate against tenants.
“It is a cost-free, effective policy solution that will help create safe, stable, and affordable housing by preventing displacement and housing insecurity.”
Opponents of the bill have argued that lapse-of-time evictions allow landlords to remove disruptive tenants, maintain better control of their own property, and sell or renovate their property freely.
At a Feb. 10 meeting of the Housing Committee, a week before Tuesday's press conference, members voted on item numbers as concepts to raise. Votes do not necessarily represent how a legislator will officially vote on bills later in the session.
Felipe described just-cause eviction legislation -- An Act Concerning Evictions For Cause -- as the "main event."
"We've been doing this for the last few years," Felipe said in his introduction of the concept at that meeting. "This is the most conservative version of this bill we've ever had."
Republican State Sen. Rob Sampson of Wolcott said that he would have a hard time getting to a "yes" vote on just-cause eviction legislation. "I find this very far from anything that could be considered conservative in any way," he said. "It's a direct violation of property rights."
Sampson also said that he believed the legislation wouldn't achieve its stated goal. "When you put more requirements on landlords," he said, you therefore "create, or worsen, exacerbate a housing shortage."
Democratic State Rep. Minnie Gonzalez of Hartford, who said she was once a landlord, said that she had to deal with many problems because of tenants who damaged her property and received no help from the court. She was concerned because she said it is already hard to evict tenants. "I will vote for this bill now here in committee to see if we can fix it," she said, "but I'm not saying I will vote for this bill on the floor."
In the end, the committee voted 13-9 to raise the concept.