Senate Commerce committee advances amended bill limiting end‑of‑lease evictions to 12‑month leases and only when vacancy rate rises

The Senate Committee on Commerce advanced an amended version of House Bill 60 on a voice vote after extended public testimony and committee debate. The amendment replaces the bill’s original text to limit end‑of‑lease evictions to leases of 12 months or longer, require landlords to file eviction actions within six months after the lease expires, and make the policy effective only when the Federal Reserve reports New Hampshire’s rental vacancy rate at 5 percent or higher.

Supporters of the amendment said it balances contractual rights and housing stability. Senator Ricciardi, who moved the replacement amendment, said it “changes the minimum lease term to 12 months or longer” and adds a six‑month filing deadline so a long‑term tenant is not evicted years after originally signing a lease. Senator Murphy described the amendment as “a good compromise and a good intermediate step,” saying the 5 percent trigger would preserve tenant stability while restoring contractual clarity for landlords.

The amendment was adopted by the committee; the committee then passed HB 60 as amended. Committee deliberations also produced a technical committee amendment that replaced references to the U.S. Census vacancy measure with the Federal Reserve vacancy series as the trigger source for the 5 percent threshold.

The hearing drew dozens of public witnesses. Renter advocates, social‑service providers and municipal welfare officials warned passage would increase homelessness in New Hampshire’s tight market. Representative Kathy Stabb (Hillsborough District 25), citing research she distributed to the committee, said the state has “about 157,000 renter households” and that rental supply is especially scarce for lower‑income households: “there are only 39 affordable apartments for every 100 extremely low‑income households,” she said. Jennifer Chisholm, executive director of the New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness, cited a 2024 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and warned that evictions substantially increase homelessness and reduce family economic stability for years.

Landlord representatives and housing‑industry witnesses testified in favor of the original bill during earlier hearings, arguing that a lease is a mutual contract with a defined end date and that landlords sometimes need the ability to decline renewal for business reasons. Jonathan Hill, who identified himself as a landlord and a member of the New Hampshire Rental Properties Association, said HB 60 would require a 60‑day notice and “keeps the eviction off of the credit record” if tenants move out rather than pursue eviction. Nick Norman, representing a landlord membership organization, told the committee HB 60 would make it easier for marginal applicants to be accepted knowing the landlord could end the tenancy if problems arose.

Committee members pressed for clarifying language during the deliberation period. Some senators expressed concerns about potential discrimination and retaliation: witnesses including an attorney from New Hampshire Legal Assistance and representatives from disability and mental‑health advocacy organizations warned that an “independent, nondiscriminatory reason” for an end‑of‑lease termination could be used to mask discriminatory actions and burden tenants with lengthy administrative processes to prove wrongdoing. Vanessa Blaise, director of policy and planning at the New Hampshire Council on Developmental Disabilities, told senators the U.S. Supreme Court reasoning that shaped New Hampshire’s protections was intended in part to protect people with disabilities from instability.

The committee’s amendment attempts to limit the most immediate displacement risks by (1) applying the end‑of‑lease rule only to leases of 12 months or longer, (2) requiring landlords to file any eviction action based on lease expiration within six months after the lease ends, and (3) activating the rule only when the Federal Reserve vacancy measure reaches 5 percent. The committee also substituted the Federal Reserve vacancy series for the census measure in the bill’s trigger language.

Supporters of the change argued the six‑month filing deadline and 5 percent trigger reduce the chance of long‑standing tenants being unexpectedly displaced, while opponents said the amendment does not remove the bill’s primary concern: that landlords will use lease nonrenewal to remove tenants for subjective reasons. Several tenants and tenant advocates provided first‑hand testimony about the difficulty of finding replacement housing; multiple witnesses described paying more than half of their income for rent, long waiting lists for subsidized housing, and the health and financial harms tied to displacement.

The committee’s action was procedural: it voted to pass the bill as amended out of committee. The bill’s language now reflects the committee compromise described above and will move to the full Senate for consideration under the Legislature’s scheduling rules.

The committee recorded the outcome as the bill ‘passed as amended’ out of committee; detailed roll‑call tallies for the final motion were not entered in the hearing record.