Brandon Lemay choked up when he talked about housing instability in New Hampshire. Looking at his own lease that ends in February, his rent will go up by $1,000 a month.

Housing is already hard to come by statewide, he said. Vacancy rates are low, rental prices are high and although state law dictates that a landlord can only terminate a lease with “good cause,” they can still find a number of ways to do so – offering cash to end the contract, or egregiously increasing the rent.

If a bill sponsored by Rep. Bob Lynn, a Windham Republican passes, landlords in New Hampshire would need no reason to terminate a lease at the end of the contract with a tenant. Lemay, an affordable housing advocate, worries the change would cause increased instability in an already precarious market.

“This law would make it easier to put people out in the streets, to destabilize tenants, and it dis-incentivizes landlords from working with their tenants,” he said.

It’s not the first time Lynn has introduced this legislation. Last year, the bill passed the House but was killed in the Senate, where it also died in 2021.

The aim of the bill – to allow landlords to terminate leases that are longer than six months at the end of their contract – would overturn a state Supreme Court ruling from 2005. The case, AIMCO Properties v. Kasha Dziewisz, set a precedent that became a “personal pet peeve” for Lynn. He previously served as the Chief Justice of New Hampshire’s Supreme Court for a year before retiring in 2019.

Lynn has heard arguments like Lemay’s against his proposal before. Ahead of the public hearing, 151 people submitted online testimony in opposition. In front of the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, more than a dozen witnesses spoke out against the bill in an hour-and-a-half public hearing.

But he now has a new defense – this provision would help the housing market by encouraging landlords to rent to tenants that may be “less desirable” knowing they could terminate the lease at the end of its contract.

“If the law remains as it is that will discourage landlords from taking a chance on marginal tenants, which it seems to me will work to the detriment of the very people that many of the opponents of this bill say they might protect,” he said.

Mary Osborne, a renter in Dover, disagrees.

The bill would add a level of increased uncertainty for tenants like herself. Renters may be fearful to request repairs on their unit or engage with the landlord, knowing that an annoyance could lead to the termination of their lease, she said.

Besides, finding housing is already hard enough without this bill, she said. Osborne, a single mother with a disability, is raising a special needs child. She has a housing voucher that helps pay their rent, but finding a unit that would accept it took nine months.

If the landlord decided to end their lease, she’s not sure where she and her son would go.

“If for any reason my landlord decides otherwise, there will be no alternatives for me,” she said. “Homelessness will become an inevitable reality and with limited shelter space, my only choice will be which parking lot to park my car in, my makeshift home.”

This same fear of homelessness rings true with college students.

Alice House, a junior at the University of New Hampshire from out of state, fears that if she lost her housing in the Durham area, she’d be without a safety net to fall back on. While students should be focusing on building community and completing their degrees, the notion that a landlord could end her lease with no reason only adds stress, she said.

“Housing is not just a product or service, as we’ve been talking about, but a matter of safety, shelter,” she said. “Just because people are renting should not mean that safety should be taken away from them.”

Elliott Berry has seen more reasons than anyone as to why a landlord evicts their tenants. In fact, he’d go so far to say that he’s represented the most tenants in the state during his 47 years as a lawyer for New Hampshire Legal Aid before he retired a year ago.

Last year, 3,600 tenants were evicted in the state, he shared. That number alone should prove that it is not hard to evict renters with the current rules.

Compared to manufactured housing regulations, evicting tenants out of a rental provides far more leniency. In a park, where residents often own their house but rent the land it sits on, failure to pay rent or threatening the safety of the park are the two stipulations for evictions, he said.

“That has been in effect since 1975 and the industry is doing just fine,” Berry said.

Ben Kremer, who organizes for the New Hampshire Youth Movement, said he thinks about the need for young people to remain in New Hampshire as the state continues to age. To find housing today, means defying the odds of the slim margins in the rental market. And even then, securing an apartment requires a security deposit and first month’s rent, cash that many don’t have on hand.

Lynn’s legislation would only require more residents to find housing on shorter notice. Kremer has an apt metaphor for what this bill would mean for tenants if passed.

“It puts a trapdoor under every renter. That is a lever that can be pulled at the end of their lease, and then they have to scramble to find housing,” he said. “We need young people to stay in the state. They are our future. But we cannot stay here. Even if we want to stay here, we cannot stay here if we don’t have stable housing.”