NLIHC to Host Webinar on State and Local Rent Stabilization Protections on April 16

This month, NLIHC’s State and Local Innovation (SLI) campaign will host the next installment of its State and Local Tenant Protection Webinar Series: A Primer on Renters’ Rights with a new webinar on rent stabilization protections. This new webinar installment is a continuation of a series previously launched by the SLI campaign in November 2024 with a webinar focused on laws that limit excessive rental fees, commonly known as “junk fees.” In February 2025, the SLI campaign continued the series by hosting a webinar on “just cause” eviction standards and the upcoming webinar on April 16 will focus on state and local efforts to enact rent stabilization protections – or laws that limit the speed and amount – by which rents can increase. The webinar will take place from 2-3 pm ET and registrants will have the opportunity to hear from a broad range of speakers, including tenant advocates and legal service providers, about specific campaigns, resources, and efforts to advocate for rent stabilization protections for tenants within their jurisdictions. Register for the webinar here!  

During the upcoming webinar, registrants will have the opportunity to hear from advocates in Portland, Oregon and Prince George’s County, Maryland about local efforts to advocate for rent stabilization protections. Registrants will also have the opportunity to learn more about how each law works in implementation, how it is being enforced, and the challenges and lessons learned from each of the protections being passed – especially at the state level in Oregon and at the local level in Prince George’s County. 

An agenda for the call can be found below: 

• Welcome 

  • Nada Hussein, National Low Income Housing Coalition 

• Level Setting 

  • Overview of Rent Stabilization Protections: Nada Hussein, National Low Income Housing Coalition 

• What Does Research Tell Us About Rent Stabilization? 

  • Samuel Stein and Oksana Mironova, Community Service Society of New York 

• Local Spotlight: How Local Advocates Won Rent Stabilization Protections in Oregon 

  • Kim McCarty, Community Alliance of Tenants 

• Local Spotlight: Making Rent Stabilization Protections Permanent: Efforts to Pass Rent Stabilization in Prince George’s County, Maryland 

  • Eden Aaron, CASA 

• Q&A 

  • Nada Hussein, National Low Income Housing Coalition 

• Closing 

As noted, NLIHC’s State and Local Innovation (SLI) Project will host the webinar series. The SLI campaign is an initiative created by the National Low Income Housing Coalition in April 2024 to support state and local partners across the country in the pursuit of advancing, implementing, and enforcing state and local tenant protections. The campaign also works to create and sustain emergency rental assistance programs, prevent the criminalization of homelessness, and provide technical assistance around state-level housing trust funds. With just a patchwork of federal-level tenant protections for renters, the work of state and local housing advocates to keep eviction rates down and prevent homelessness is critical.   

The webinar series was created to exemplify the advocacy efforts employed by housing advocates, tenant organizers, and legal aid service providers who have enacted just cause eviction protections, rent stabilization ordinances, laws that strengthen code enforcement procedures and habitability standards, and laws that limit excessive rental fees. Such protections were highlighted in NLIHC’s State and Local Tenant Protection Series: A Primer on Renters’ Rights, a series of four toolkits released in August 2024. The toolkits provide an overview of each one major tenant protection listed, detail the common components of the protection, list information about state and local jurisdictions that have adopted the protection, suggest provisions that should be taken into consideration when enacting the protection, and highlight complementary policies that can be passed alongside the protection to ensure the greatest impact possible. Corresponding to the toolkits are case studies that provide specific cases of state and local jurisdictions to have enacted such protections.  

The SLI campaign will host one final webinar on June 11 on laws that strengthen code enforcement procedures and habitability standards for renters.  

Register for the webinar here.  

For more information on NLIHC’s State and Local Innovation project, please visit: https://nlihc.org/state-and-local-innovation.