Great in theory, bad in practice.

First, all that's needed is a criminal complaint and anyone can break a lease. Thus, the law permits gross manipulation.

Second, they just made it a lot harder for lower-income couples and families to get apartments.

What is it with raising the costs of housing on the lower classes? You might as well have enacted a rent-control ordinance...

One notes, one must endure a legal procedure before this law provides any protection.

One notes that the criminal lover lawyer has not provided for the eviction of the abuser. One must still spend months and $1000's for a lawyer to evict. To get enforcement of the eviction. To buy a pit bull to bite the sleazeball tenant until he vacates.

This is just lawyer rent seeking. Lawyers running their con. No woman on earth has ever stayed with her abuser out of fear of breaking the lease. Most abuse victims are mentally ill, drugged out, out-of-it psychos, not even aware what a lease is. An ordinary woman could only be hit once, by surprise. Lease or no lease? Gone.

They stay because they want to, not because the landlord might sue them. This is ridiculous lawyer sham.

C.L.U.C: Regarding the criminal complaints, under this law anyone breaking a lease would have to show documentation like a criminal complaint or restraining order, so it looks like Wisconsin didn't have that rule in place before. Unless the bill simply duplicates the common law, but then it wouldn't be news so I doubt it. As you may know some states have friendlier landlord tenant laws than others so perhaps Wisconsin was simply catching up with that trend.

Other helpful features of the law: it voids leases if landlords punish tenants for calling police or emergency services. It prohibits municipalities from enforcing ordinances that charge fees to property owners when tenants call police for help in domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking situations.

Is the reason you believe this law would make it more difficult for lower income couples that you think landlords will discriminate against them, believing low income people are more likely to commit violence against each other? Or are there other downstream effects of this law that you anticipate having a negative consequence for low income renters? I'd be interested to hear more about this.

SC: You raise a good point about evicting the abuser rather than requiring the victim to go through all the legal hoops to protect herself. I imagine this is for cases, though, where the victim wouldn't be able to pay rent alone. So unless we're ready to evict the abuser and require that he continue paying whatever portion of rent he was paying prior to eviction, that may not solve the problem for the victim.

"Is the reason you believe this law would make it more difficult for lower income couples that you think landlords will discriminate against them...?"

Yes. In essence, landlords will be that much less inclined to rent an apartment to people who look like those who appear on the t.v. show C.O.P.S.

But note that the ultimate losers in this law are those with criminal histories of domestic violence, which will show up on the background checks that landlords will begin/continue to require. And as we all know, it's perfectly plausible for a person to be both a "victim" of domestic violence and have a criminal history of it.

In many states, for example, a women threatening her husband in front of her children is guilty of Assualt IV Felony. She, for one, will have a much harder time getting an apartment because of this law. In essence, she'll have an easier time getting out of her lease, but a harder time finding a place to go...

Most lease have a quiet enjoyment clause. Multiple visits by the police because of the noise and mayhem of all out battles violate that clause. This law precludes enforcement of the clause, to the detriment of the neighbors, and of property values in the area. Would you buy or rent a property with three police cars, lights on, frequently parked in the front?

Again, find any report of any woman who has stayed in an abusive relationship to avoid breaching the lease. In the history of womankind, find a single example.

Just look up the procedural history behind this law. Hearings held, etc.