U.S renters fear higher rent, eviction over energy efficient homes

• Policymakers focus emissions from homes, buildings
• Renters worry home rehabs can lead to displacement
• Pennsylvania protects tenants alongside green push

WASHINGTON – Renters and local officials across the United States are warning that the rising response to climate change could inadvertently aggravate the country's housing affordability crisis, driving up costs and even leading to evictions.

With homes and buildings contributing more than a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, policymakers have started pushing landlords to weatherize, improve energy efficiency and replace old fossil fuel appliances. 

Yet there is growing concern that such incentives could also prompt landlords to raise rents and displace tenants in the name of green upgrades. 

"Tenants need upgrades to their units, but landlords often use basic health and safety repairs as an excuse to hike rent," Tara Raghuveer, director of the national Tenant Union Federation, told Context.

"This is why decarbonization upgrades must come along with rent regulations and other protections to keep tenants housed."

Tens of billions of dollars in federal funding for building decarbonization is set to become available, and related local mandates are being put in place in New York, California and elsewhere.

In Connecticut, tenants are already on edge as investors from nearby New York have flooded in.

Luke Melonakos-Harrison, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union, said "lots of evictions" had been caused as owners have to repay loans that count on steep rent increases.

"We see landlords using anything imaginable to raise the rent – often they don't even come up with a reason."

He and others are pushing a state bill that would expand "just cause" protections limiting the reasons for which a tenant can be evicted, and they want to ensure that covers green and other renovations.

Landlords, including the Connecticut Apartment Association, warn the bill would slow construction of new housing and exacerbate shortages.

Property manager Krystal Garcia told lawmakers in March that "the narrative that landlords use lapse of time to clear out a building, renovate, and increase rents is overblown – nobody wants to get rid of a good resident."

Yet tenants say they have reason to be concerned. Connecticut Tenants Union chapter head Sarah Giovanniello said a new landlord purchased her 70-unit, two-story apartment complex in New Haven in 2021 and made minor upgrades before seeking to double rents.

In February, the landlord installed four electric-vehicle chargers in the parking lot, despite just one renter having an EV, a situation Giovanniello said made residents nervous.

"If it costs him money, he would pass that on to us," she said of the landlord.

"That means any upgrades they do to the property actually have more potential to harm tenants than help."

Local protections

Tenant protections vary significantly across the country, according to a March report that looked at the potential impacts of decarbonization efforts in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

Chelsea Kirk, a director with Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, an economic justice nonprofit in Los Angeles that co-published the report, said for years she had seen California renters get stuck with higher rents after construction, or worse.

"If a landlord does a $15,000 retrofit, how much of that does the tenant have to pay? The answer is 100%," she said. "I've seen landlords initiate construction work just for the purpose of evicting a tenant."

Kirk now foresees a similar pattern if the push for building decarbonization is not accompanied by "foundational tenant protections" in communities across the country.

Raising the alarm about such needs has been complicated because housing and environmental advocacy had traditionally operated separately.

Amneh Minkara, deputy director of the environmental group Sierra Club's Building Electrification campaign, has been working to close that gap, including with a new policy briefing in October, co-published with the Climate and Community Institute.

It looks at the "good cause" eviction work in Connecticut, rent stabilization in St. Paul, tenants' right to organize in Kansas City and habitability standards in Los Angeles and others.

The tens of billions of dollars in federal funding is now up in the air due to President Donald Trump's policies, but the institute's housing policy director, Ruthy Gourevitch, said renter safeguards remained a local responsibility.

"Most of the tenant protections that I work on are typically done at the state and local level, and can happen through direct negotiations between tenants and landlords," Gourevitch said.

Pennsylvania models

In Pennsylvania, state Senator Nikil Saval's Whole-Home Repairs law is funding home upgrades, but with a stipulation: for a certain period, landlords cannot raise rents more than 3% above the base rent per year.

"We don't want costs for maintenance to be passed on to tenants and therefore put these apartments out of reach," Saval said in an interview.

The law has sparked similar efforts in other states, as well as a federal bill co-sponsored by Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

Philadelphia, meanwhile, the state's largest city, is offering forgivable loans for landlord repairs in exchange for 10 years of affordability, said Rachel Mulbry, a director with the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation.

That trade-off has been fine with Joseph Achenbach, who owns about a dozen properties in the Philadelphia area.

At a three-bedroom row house that qualifies for rental subsidies, he recently used the program to install a new high-efficiency system to replace the old boiler and water heater, along with some other work.

"Green upgrades – that's my number two issue. My number one is safety," he said. "If I can save (my renters) money paying utilities, that's a good thing. I feel good, and they're happy."

(Reporting by Carey L. Biron; Editing by Jon Hemming)