Renters across the country face a dizzying number of junk fees that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars per year and push safe, affordable, and sustainable housing out of reach. These junk fees disproportionately harm people of color who are more likely to rent homes and pay steep application fees. The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) 2023 report, Too Damn High: How Junk Fees Add to Skyrocketing Rents, shined a light on the harmful junk fees that people must pay to secure and maintain rental housing. Too Damn High provided detailed information through survey data collected from legal services and nonprofit attorneys about these fees and urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to rein them in through its ongoing rulemaking to regulate junk fees across the economy and
enforcement actions.
In this companion report, which takes its title from an individual renter’s comment to the FTC on rental housing junk fees (captured in endnote 1), we focus on steps that state and local governments and advocates can take to address junk fees. State and local governments play a central role in landlord-tenant law in the United States, as they have traditionally been the entities regulating rental housing. They should build on federal efforts to fully protect vulnerable renters from widespread and abusive junk fees-related practices. State and local laws are a traditional, straightforward, and potentially stronger tool for imposing outright fee prohibitions and price limits in rental housing.
State and local policymakers and advocates have already started to regulate rental housing junk fees where federal law does not through legislation, regulation, state enforcement of existing and new laws, and private litigation. We provide a detailed description and appendix of actions taken by more than a dozen states, including laws:
- Targeting application and screening fees.
- Regulating other specific types of fees, such as late fees.
- Imposing conditions on landlords before they can charge fees.
- Requiring disclosure and documentation of fees.
We also describe innovative steps that local governments, such as Montgomery County, Md., and Olympia, Wash., have taken that are more protective of tenants than many statewide laws.
Finally, we highlight steps that government, private, and non-profit attorneys have taken to limit fees through the enforcement of relevant laws and lease provisions. Tackling rental housing junk fees has added an important dimension to the work tenants and tenant organizers are already doing to address poor rental conditions.