The Racing Pulse of the General Assembly at Crossover

The Racing Pulse of the General Assembly at Crossover
By Tommy Herbert, VAMA Manager of Government Affairs

The 2023 Regular Session of the Virginia General Assembly is well underway, and Tuesday, February 7 will be “Crossover Day.” Crossover Day is the constitutionally determined day during each annual Session where each Chamber of the Legislature must finish work on its own bills and consider only bills that have passed out of the other. That means that by the end of the day Tuesday, the Senate of Virginia can only consider bills that have passed through the House of Delegates and vice versa. All legislation that has not progressed to that point is officially dead after Crossover.

2023 will see elections for every seat in the General Assembly in newly- and differently-drawn districts that pack multiple incumbents inside some areas while leaving others without an incumbent at all. Because of these circumstances and others, many of the Commonwealth’s crack political prognosticators have judged this a most murderous year for legislation on a number of important policy fronts. Virginia’s legislature is divided, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans commanding the House of Delegates. The margins of control in both chambers are narrow; two votes, but the respective majority caucuses are by-and-large very disciplined. Partisan issues like firearms rights, abortion access, and government spending make the journey from the Democratic Senate to the Republican House (or vice versa) look nearly hopeless.

One issue upon which commentators do expect motion is the topic of housing. The urban diaspora caused by COVID-19 has begun to recede, bringing rents in many metro areas of the Commonwealth up as supply struggles to meet demand for apartment rental housing. The shortage of housing that predated the pandemic has only become sharper as parts of the government’s response have spurred on the runaway costs of accessing and providing housing. As they so often do, the voters are looking at their representatives to “just do something now.”

Some of these “somethings” have taken destructive form, like one Delegate’s attempt to open up Virginia to rent control, or another’s hope to take all “pay or quit” timelines from 5 days to 14 days, as was temporarily instituted in response to the virus. Others attempt to tackle Virginia’s housing shortage head-on, like attempts to incentivize localities accountable to facilitate the housing necessary for the economic development that they solicit.

At time of writing, VAMA’s Government Affairs team are hard at work educating legislators on these bills and others. A few highlights below:

1. 14-day notice: This is a perennial attempt to extend the pre-filing timeline when a resident becomes late on rent from 5 days to 14 days. The House version of this legislation did not survive the House Committee on General Laws’ Subcommittee #2, colloquially known as the “Housing Subcommittee.” The Senate version, however, was more successful and has passed that Chamber. We will be working to advocate for House members to look similarly on the Senate version post-Crossover.
2. ESA reform: A second stab at the rampant fraud in the system of reasonable accommodation requests for Emotional Support Animals (ESAs) has passed out of the House of Delegates and will soon be up for consideration in the Senate. This bill, narrower than last year’s, will provide recourse under the Consumer Protection Act to go after the providers of unreliable documentation to support a request for an ESA. After catching flak in the Senate last year, this bill concept spent 2022 in the capable embrace of the Virginia Housing Commission, which blessed this bill with consensus prior to its introduction. That is a helpful stamp of approval, especially in a divided government.
3. Month-to-Month Terminations: A late-breaking bill seeks to require housing providers who cancel more than 20 month-to-month leases on one property within a month to provide a 60-day notice rather than the current 30-day notice of those terminations. This legislation is aimed at “clean out” situations at properties where an ownership change or planned renovation can force large numbers of resident families out of their units in a short time, which can cripple social services, distort housing markets, and lead to high rates of housing instability in certain cases. This bill met with broad, perhaps surprising, approval in the House of Delegates, and is expected to pass into the Senate at Crossover.