Measure would overturn 2005 state Supreme Court ruling requiring ‘good cause’ before tenant can be evicted
By Aimee Rothman-Granite State News Collaborative
Amid New Hampshire’s continuing tight housing market, legislators are considering a bill that threatens to strip what critics see as vital protections for renters, contending it would put thousands at greater risk of eviction and homelessness.
House Bill 60 seeks to remove protections that have been in place since 2005. In March, the House of Representatives approved the bill, and the Senate is now considering it. If approved and signed by the governor, it would go into effect Jan. 1, 2026.
New Hampshire Housing’s 2023 Residential Cost Survey report found that the state had a 0.6% vacancy rate for apartments, far below the 6.6% national average. According to a 2024 analysis by the N.H. Fiscal Policy Institute, the vacancy rate needed to create a balanced rental market is 5 percent — a percentage not seen in New Hampshire since 2010.
The result: a 36% jump in the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment — to $1,833 — between 2015 and 2024, according to New Hampshire Housing..
Under HB60, landlords could evict a tenant without cause at the end of a lease period. Since a 2005 N.H. Supreme Court decision, landlords have been required to show “good cause” to evict tenants, even after a lease ends. That means landlords can't simply remove a tenant at the end of a lease without a valid reason.
Current legal protections for tenants means they ‘can stay at their apartments for perpetuity,’ says House Bill 60 sponsor Robert Lynn, whose bill would eliminate once again allow no-cause evictions at the termination of a lease. The Windham Republican adds that the protections also discourage landlords in the business. (Screenshot)
State Rep. Robert J. Lynn — a former chief justice of the state’s top court — is the bill’s sponsor. “The Supreme Court decision in 2005 was really the wrong decision,” he said, and HB60 would “ really return the law to what it should have always been.”
Under current protections, “tenants can stay at their apartments for perpetuity,” Lynn said. By adding expiration of a lease as a “good cause” to evict a tenant, landlords could feel more encouraged “to take risks on riskier applicants,” such as people who have a low credit score, unstable job history or a criminal record, Lynn said.
According to Lynn, HB60 would simply enforce the terms of a lease agreement in which a tenant and landlord agree that the tenant can live at the apartment and pay rent for an agreed upon period, “which would be mutually beneficial for both tenants and landlords.”
While Lynn acknowledged that landlords “could abuse the law if they had the mind for it,” overall, “landlords are in the business of making money, so it doesn’t line up that they would kick out a good tenant.”
Bill raises concerns
Housing advocates disagree. They say HB60 could make the search for housing even more competitive for renters and could open the door for no-cause evictions and housing discrimination.
“Our biggest concern as a housing provider is that evictions on tenants’ records make them that much harder to place in housing down the road, and we do everything we can to avoid evictions,” said Betsey Andrews Parker, chief executive officer of the Community Action Partnership of Strafford County. “Otherwise, those that are hard to house — those with bad credit, those with an unstable job history — it’s one more strike against them.”
Senate approval of HB60 would be “an even bigger detriment for tenants and housing advocates in the state,” Andrews Parker said, “It concerns me in an already-tight housing market that we are making it harder for people to obtain housing.”
Housing providers already “did not have adequate resources to meet the demands before our current budget cycle,” she said.
Others in the housing field agree that HB60 could intensify the housing crisis for tenants.
“We’re very concerned about this bill,” said Nick Taylor, director of Housing Action NH. “With the housing market as tight as it is, any increase in evictions or increase in folks who are displaced unnecessarily could lead to increased homelessness, and it is going to be really hard for those folks to find a place that they can afford moving forward.”
He said the bill “is overturning years of precedents when it comes to allowable evictions, and in this market, that is really concerning. There are already processes in place for cause evictions that cover a whole range of reasons why a landlord might want to remove a tenant.”
House Bill 60, which would once again allow no-cause evictions, 'has the potential to increase discrimination against people with mental illness,’ said NAMI NH Executive Director Susan Stearns. (Courtesy photo)
He’s concerned “that if someone is complaining about real repairs that need to be done to their unit, maybe the landlord will say, ‘OK, we’re going to evict you instead of having to deal with your complaints’ and wait for someone else who is more desperate or more willing to go along with the current status of a unit and rent to them.”
The National Alliance on Mental Illness New Hampshire has been following the bill in the Legislature, because “the bill has the potential to increase discrimination against people with mental illness,” said NAMI NH Executive Director Susan Stearns. “There are a lot of areas of significant concern.”
In written testimony submitted to the Senate, Holly Stevens, director of public policy at NAMI NH, stated that “individuals with serious mental health conditions already experience discrimination in the housing rental process. HB60 would only suffice to make it easier for landlords to discriminate against a person who they find out during the tenancy period has a mental illness.“
“Given the housing crisis facing NH and the overrepresentation of individuals with a mental health condition in the unhoused population, the passage of HB60 would only contribute to the increase of unhoused, hospitalized, or incarcerated individuals with a mental illness,” her testimony concludes.
The bill is currently in the Senate Commerce Committee. It was also tucked into the budget trailer bill (HB2) by the House.
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.