Salt Lake City OKs Law to Jail ‘Rent Thieves’

So many things have loosened up since the days of Charles Dickens and debtors’ prisons. Too many, perhaps, to the thinking of the Salt Lake City Council.

On a crackling cold Monday night, in a City Hall alight with a 20-foot Christmas tree, a defiant council voted, 5 to 1, for an ordinance that could send tenants to jail for not paying their rent.

“Merry Christmas to the poor of Salt Lake City,” shrugged an unhappy Mayor Palmer DePaulis, who vetoed the ordinance earlier this month.

Monday night’s vote overrode that veto and put the law in force beginning Jan. 15.

After that, anyone who “intentionally” fails to pay the rent is subject to criminal prosecution. The penalty could be up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The controversial Christmas-week statute, which has been debated here for a month, has served to reinforce Salt Lake City’s image as a stern, intolerant place, an image much resented here.

“People here are sensitive to that perception, about this being a place where the clock is turned back. So as soon as stuff like this happens, we are preyed upon by the national press, which says: ‘Oh, here’s another one coming out of left field to show that it’s a city behind the times,’ ” DePaulis said.

Council member Don Whitehead led the override effort. A landlord and a renter himself, he said the issue has been badly misinterpreted by opponents and the press.

“It has been like little old ladies are going to be thrown on the streets. And that’s not so. . . . This is aimed at the professional rent thief. This town has them; every town has them. They move in, stay as long as they can without paying and then move on.”

Seen that way, he said, the law should be good for Salt Lake City’s image.

“Putting crooks in jail should be a positive,” he said. “ . . . People who want to live free without paying the rent are not welcome in Salt Lake City.”

Leading up to Monday’s veto override, Whitehead and other City Council members said they have received record numbers of calls and complaints from constituents in this city of 160,000, 51% of whom rent.

Utah has long had some of the nation’s most favorable laws for landlords, including a seven-day eviction process. Then, earlier this winter, the City Council and mayor teamed up on a first-in-the-state bill of rights for tenants, including the right to withhold rent in the event a landlord fails to provide vital repairs.

“After that,” Whitehead explained, “the landlords wrote me and said they felt there ought to be something on our side.”

Given the priorities of police and prosecutors, only a few of the most egregious deadbeats are apt to see the inside of a jail under the ordinance, providing it withstands almost-certain court challenges.

But opponents say that just by sitting on the statute books, the law is sure to alter the sometimes combative chemistry between renters and landlords.

“We already have a lot of poor people who come to us and say their landlords are threatening them with jail,” explained Kay Fox, an attorney with Utah Legal Services. “Up until now, we’ve been able to say: ‘The state has abolished debtors’ prisons. Your landlord is just trying to scare you.’ But not now, not with this.”

Whitehead acknowledged that the most ruthless of landlords could use the ordinance to bully the worst of tenants. But he said that would be illegal. “I do hope landlords won’t use this the wrong way,” he said.

The lone vote against the ordinance was cast by Councilman Don C. Hale, a landlord with more than 40 rental units in the city. He complained that the law would be expensive and ineffective and drain law enforcement resources from more pressing tasks.

“The vast amount of public outcry the council has experienced in recent days from Salt Lake City residents and citizens across the country should register for something in the minds of elected officials like ourselves,” he said.