The preemption of local tenant protections has real-time urgency. On the day that Protasiewicz is sworn in, renters across Madison will be embarking upon the hellish summer ritual of moving on an August lease schedule. A lot of them will be sucking up ever-higher rents, or moving to avoid a rent increase. If you haven’t grasped how dire things are for renters in Madison right now, you live under a rock.
We’re in this situation in part because landlords have too much power and tenants have too little. At the very least, the City of Madison needs to implement some form of dramatic rent control, require landlords to offer more flexibility in lease terms and offer month-to-month options, ban rental application fees, create stiffer requirements for affordable units in new developments, and enact stronger eviction protections. This is a fast-growing city where people are increasingly priced out and spend far too much of their incomes on rent. State preemptions prevent Madison from treating this like the emergency it is.