Bill Allowing Abuse Victims To Break Lease Passes Committee

BATON ROUGE (AP) — A Senate legal committee on Tuesday approved a bill that would allow victims of domestic abuse to prematurely break a rental lease to escape an abuser, among other steps that would give victims more leeway with landlords.

         The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, also would bar landlords from evicting abuse victims for calling police to their homes. And it would allow victims to break a lease as long as they show their landlord a police report, court papers or a letter from a care provider backing up their claim.

         Advocates said the measure is needed because abused women have been evicted after drawing landlord scrutiny for having the police visit. They also said women fleeing domestic violence often find themselves impoverished and homeless.

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         "I know what it' is like to be evicted because you have some nutcase in your life," Debra Marie of Baton Rouge told the Senate judiciary committee. "To be punched, to be bruised and blackened and broken, and then have someone put you and your family out on the street — that's' unconscionable."

         Over 50 percent of abuse victims that seek emergency shelter through the Family Justice Center in New Orleans are evicted because of domestic violence, said Mary Claire Landry, executive director of the organization.

         But business and property rental groups said the bill unfairly punishes them. One reason given was that the bill would allow renters to seek punitive damages if a property dispute winds up in court. Another critic suggested victims could give false accounts of abuse in order to get out of a lease.

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         The bill "would treat lessors more harshly than the abusers themselves," said Stacey Shane-Schott, who is on the board of directors for the Apartment Association of Greater New Orleans, according to the organization's website. "You're going to come after me for punitive damages, plus actual damages, if I've done wrong when you are not even going after the abuser for that. It makes it look like you're coming after us."

         Committee Chairman J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, criticized Shane-Schott for her remarks, suggesting her comments were insensitive.

         "We put the abusers in jail. That's what we do. If you beat someone in this state, we put you in jail," said Morrell. "You made a comment that the penalties (to landlords) are more onerous than to the abusers … That is absolutely false and not true, and there are probably a lot of survivors in the room that were very offended by that."

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         – by AP Reporter Brian Slodysko

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