Utah is the place for many things, but it’s not the place for robust policies surrounding renters’ rights.
The law here favors landlords in nearly every way. Even so, a handful of state lawmakers have tried to move the needle on renter protections. Outgoing Republican Rep. Marsha Judkins is one of them. Renters don’t have many rights, Judkins said, and the rights they do have are “kind of dependent on the landlord.” And her colleagues have been hesitant to pass renter protections.
“It's because legislators tend to be landlords more often than they are renters. Far, far, far more often than they are renters,” she said.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported in May that more than a third of lawmakers in the Utah Legislature profits from real estate. Renters make up at least 30% of the state’s housing market, according to the Kem. C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Essentially, renters are at the mercy of landlords and the lease they signed. Unlike other states, Utah law doesn’t govern leases. Rather, it’s the opposite.
“The lease governs your rights,” said Angela McGuire, co-founder of the Utah-based tenant rights nonprofit People’s Legal Aid, which shut down after the pandemic.
“So when we say, what are your rights in Utah, it's different for every single person, because it depends on whatever lease you've signed.”
What protections are on the books
Even though there are limited universal protections for renters, some do still exist under the Utah Fits Premises Act.
All units are required to have electrical systems, heating, plumbing, and hot and cold water.
If something in the unit is life-threatening, the tenant must notify the landlord and the landlord has 24 hours to “diligently pursue remedial action to completion.” However, not everything rises to that bar. If the heat shuts off during the winter, for example, landlords have three days to handle the problem.
For other issues, like a ceiling leak or a cockroach infestation, the landlord has 10 days from the tenant’s notification “to take reasonable steps to fix it,” said McGuire.
But what the landlord needs to fix or what constitutes an emergency isn’t clear. McGuire said those standards are usually left up to the lease or local ordinances.
If the problem is not dealt with in those time frames, a tenant can break the lease or withhold rent. However, both those options have potential consequences.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” she said. “If you really want out of your lease because your apartment is not habitable, you can get out, but you will have to get out quickly.”
Statute requires a tenant breaking their lease to vacate the property within 10 days of notifying the landlord, which can be a tough turnaround.
Even then, a landlord can still come after the tenant for breaking a lease. If there is a dispute about a terminated lease by a tenant, the ultimate decision is made by the courts, which is often time consuming and expensive for a renter.
Another option is withholding rent if the problem is not addressed. However, McGuire said she always counseled against that option.
“You really don't have bargaining power at the end of the day,” she said. “You can withhold your rent, but that's the easiest way to get evicted.”
McGuire’s advice is to document everything and understand your lease.
There are also protections for domestic violence survivors fleeing an abuser. Judkins worked on legislation that was signed into law that allows a survivor to be removed from a lease so they don’t end up getting evicted.
Utah on evictions
A report from the Utah Bar Association found when it comes to eviction policies, the state has some of “the least renter-friendly in the nation.” Utah is one of three states where renters have three business days to vacate the property if issued an eviction notice.
If the renter fails to leave in that time, they are subjected to “treble damages,” which means the landlord can charge the tenant up to three times the daily rent for every day they occupy the unit.
“It's designed to incentivize tenants to put up or shut up, pay or get out,” McGuire said.
In all, the eviction policies leave renters in an incredibly tough spot.
“It’s stuck on your record, and so you're owing money to an old landlord. It destroys your credit, and now it's going to be much more difficult to find future housing,” McGuire said.
Utah does offer a potential lifeline. It’s one of the only states that expunges eviction records. Those with an eviction history must meet certain criteria and wait three years before it can be expunged – but there is a pathway.
Judkins worked to shorten the expungement timeline.
“The Utah Rental Housing Association, the landlord association, came to me and they said, ‘You know what, this has been so successful, we want it to be three months,’” she said.
So, she drafted a bipartisan bill. It passed the House. Got out of the assigned Senate committee. But it stalled on the Senate floor and never became law. Judkins thinks it’s because of the fiscal note of $47,000 attached to it. That money, she said, would have been used to help the courts clear the records.
“That's nothing in the budget,” Judkins said.
The bill failed during the 2024 session – the same year the Legislature passed a record-breaking $29.4 billion budget.
Other tweaks to Utah tenant law
Democratic Rep. Gay Lynn Bennion has also tried to make some reforms to assist renters with notice of entry.
“We really don't have [a] statute to protect those basic rights of someone that is often now paying maybe half of their income for where they live,” she said, “and they are not given that right of privacy in our state statute.”
Unless the lease states otherwise, landlords must give 24-hour notice if maintenance, property management or the landlord is going to enter an occupied unit. But it’s up to the discretion of the landlord, and Bennion said she heard from many constituents about landlords letting themselves or others in without warning.
“When you sign your lease, you might be signing away the 24-hour notice, and one of the women I worked closely with had maintenance come in when she was in the shower,” Bennion said.
Bennion sought to create a law that required 24-hour notice before entering under all circumstances in 2021. It didn’t get past the House floor, and nearly every Republican voted against the bill.
For Bennion, these simple solutions getting shot down tell a larger story about the Legislature.
“If someone in leadership says that they don't want a bill to pass, it can die. And that is not the representative democracy that we all want. We want a government that responds to the citizens' needs.”
Possible reforms to protect Utah renters
McGuire, the tenant rights advocate, believes it could be a good idea for Utah to model New York on some policies.
While she was living in New York City, her ceiling caved in. McGuire said she informed her landlord multiple times that her ceiling was leaking, although it was never addressed. Eventually, her ceiling fell and she turned to the city for help rather than pay the rent on an inhabitable apartment.
“The city has an escrow account that you pay your rent into … instead of to your landlord. And then when your case gets called, then they adjudicate and decide whether or not withholding that rent was reasonable,” she said. “If it's not, they just take the funds out of the escrow account and give it to the landlord. But if it was reasonable, they give it back to the tenant.”
She believes a system like that would work well in Utah.
“Public policies protected my rights as a renter, and that's something that I don't feel renters in Utah have, but a policy like that could serve interests on both sides.”
Republican Rep. Tyler Clancy is looking at ways to fix what he considers to be “a power imbalance between the landlord and the tenant.” Clancy himself is a renter and so are the majority of his constituents, since his Provo district covers Brigham Young University.
Renters “don't have any of that bargaining power to negotiate or go back and forth, whether it's on a security deposit or some of these other disputes that may arise,” he said, because “the landlord has the last say.”
His solution would be to allow communities to have a dedicated neutral party, also known as an ombudsman, to iron out concerns.
“An ombudsman could be able to educate the renters about their contract [and] find them solutions that have worked for other individuals in the past with a similar type of contract,” he said.
Such a program would take reforming Utah code. Currently, cities can’t create their ordinances around renters that are out of step with state code. And that could be a heavy lift for a Legislature that has shown little appetite to reform tenant laws.
