Contact Your Legislators Now , Landlord Bill To Ban Mmj Use In Apartments Going For Vote!

[bax]

here is the landlord bill, tell your legislator to vote no on SB72 of 2015!

http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2015-SB-0072

 

otherwise, the legislators have no idea what bill you are talking about.

 

It looks like the landlords' lobbyists and Sen Jones are making another run at amending the MMMA during lame duck.

 

If you recall, this bill would put landlord/tenant law into the MMMA and make it easier for landlords to evict patients.

 

The bill requires a 3/4ths majority and, in the past, enough Dems were standing against this (with a couple R's). However, lame duck is crazy and I see the lobbyists for the landlords pulling members off the floor to pitch this bill.

 

If you can call your Representative and let them know that you oppose this bill because it will put sick people out of a home, please do. The law already has ways to evict people who violate leases and/or harass their neighbors with loud noises or clouds of odiferous smoke.

 

We don't want to pollute the MMMA with a clause for landlords. Make a call. Call all of them if you can.

 

Regards,

Jeff

find and contact your local legislator now!!!

 

http://www.house.mi.gov/mhrpublic/

 

http://www.senate.michigan.gov/fysbyaddress.html

 

http://www.michiganvotes.org/Find.aspx

Edited December 2, 2016 by bax

[bobandtorey]

State Rep. Jim Townsend Events  

Coffee & Conversation

For your convenience, this year I will be holding Coffee Hours on the 2nd and 4th Friday each month:

2nd Friday of each month from 7:30-9:00 a.m.

Bean and Leaf Cafe

106 S Main St in Royal Oak

4th Friday of each month from 7:30-9:00 a.m.

Sero’s Restaurant

375 W 12 Mile Road in Madison Heights

If this is your Rep

[bobandtorey]

Medical marijuana in apartments? New bill might nix it

 

 

Should landlords be able to say, "No growing or smoking marijuana here. It's dangerous and detrimental to neighbors"? Or should renters with medical-marijuana cards take precedence?. . .

 

(

With marijuana and its medical version becoming big business in Colorado and other states, the organizer of today’s Capital Conference in downtown Lansing said more than 300 profit-minded Michiganders were registered to learn how they might someday turn the drug into dollars.

In the banquet area of the Radisson Hotel Lansing, they're scheduled to hear from a champion of Michigan's marijuana movement, said convention organizer Rick Thompson of Flint Township, a longtime board member of statewide groups that favor legalizing the drug.

Keynote speaker state Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, who is term-limited and is making one of his last stands as a lawmaker by battling a bill that pits medical users of pot against landlords and apartment managers. It's likely to come up for a vote in the state House this week, he said.

 

Irwin, whose career in the state House ends Dec. 31, said last week that he hoped to head off what he calls a fresh threat to Michigan's medical-marijuana users. But the trade associations for apartment owners said the bill would reduce their property damage, fire risks,electric bills and complaints about odors resulting from medical-marijuana users who smoke or grow the drug in their units.

The bill is a proposed amendment to Michigan’s 2008 voter-approved medical marijuana act to let landlords ban any use of marijuana in apartments. As Senate Bill 72, it passed last week in the state Senate’s lame-duck session.

 

On Friday, Irwin sent an e-mail blast to hundreds of Michiganders on the internet’s Safer Access forum — ranging from lawyers and dispensary owners to medical users and Libertarians who favor ending the war on drugs. It was a call to arms against letting the bill pass in the House this week, he said.

In lame-duck session,  “the most odious, unpopular things” get passed quickly" unless someone raises the alarm, Irwin said. As he puts it, landlords are telling state lawmakers that “Gee, we’ve got some tenants who are inconsiderate and they disturb the peaceful tranquility of their neighbors.” Irwin said that’s no different from someone blasting a stereo or holding a party at 3 a.m. If the bad behavior continues, an apartment owner can use Michigan’s existing landlord-tenant laws to evict a bad actor, he said.

 

“This kind of problem is something for them to work out in the court system rather than adding this hammer to the state (medical) marijuana act and putting sick people out in the street,” Irwin said.

Irwin has no reservations about his long-standing support for legalizing marijuana in Michigan, something he favored long before it was politically acceptable. Marijuana “could be a big economic opportunity for Michigan,” he said.

“’There’s so much to be gained by stopping the nonsense and just taxing this product. But the biggest difference would be ending what happens to thousands of people, whose lives get turned upside down, and all the money we spend locally to break into their homes and charge them and jail them” with marijuana offenses, he said.

The bill, which landlords and apartment managers across the state have tried for years to get passed, would amend the state’s medical marijuana act to make it far easier to evict renters who smoke or grow marijuana in their units.  If it passes, landlords could duck the costly and time-consuming process of evicting through court orders. Instead, they could simply place wording in lease agreements to say that any use or growing of marijuana anywhere on their properties would subject a tenant to immediate eviction.

The state’s big landlord groups have said in hearings for two years that they need a statewide rule to help them avoid not only complaints about odors but also the risk of fires from the high-powered lights that growers use in cultivating cannabis, as well as the growers' daunting electricity consumption and the potential mold or water damage caused when tenants turn apartments into quasi-greenhouses.

Although he declined to talk about the pending bill, apartment owner Jerry Amber — vice president of Amber Properties, which owns 1,400 units in Oakland County — said his firm expects all tenants to abide by the company’s “House Rules” that state: “Be a good neighbor and comply with all ... state and federal law.”

To Amber, that includes federal drug laws and their blanket prohibition of marijuana, whether it’s medicinal or not.

The website of Grand Rapids-based Rental Property Owners Association — which bills itself as the state’s largest real-estate investor group — says “there is more gray around this topic than a cloudy day.” It cites numerous legal tactics that landlords can use to keep tenants from growing, selling or smoking marijuana in rental properties, although all require either civil or criminal court actions.

Other rental groups cite an opinion by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who declared in 2012 that the owner of an apartment building can prohibit marijuana smoking and growing “anywhere within the facility,” and that such a ban would not violate the state medical marijuana act.

Arguably, some of the would-be entrepreneurs meeting in Lansing might consider the pending bill a business opportunity. Why not operate and advertise apartment units just for medical-marijuana users, and see whether  they flock to a new form of rental property?

That would be a good turn of events in the marketplace, said Farmington Hills lawyer Dominic Silvestri, a specialist in real-estate and small-business law. Otherwise, “it may be difficult for medical-marijuana users to find a residence without buying their own house,” he said.

 

http://www.freep.com/story/news/2016/12/03/medical-marijuana-laws-michigan-legalization-legislature-bill-landlords-tenants-apartments-lansing-jeff-irwin-democrat-ann-arbor/94902184/

[matt79]

This is one im for.

Im a homeowner and grower and im well aware of the damage that an improperly set up grow can do. From mold, holes in the walls, electrical issues etc.

Id hate to rent my house out to someone who decides to turn the place into a grow op and either didnt care about ruining my house or didnt know any better.

Rental agreements have all sorts of clauses eg. No animals. Marijuana growing should be no different

[+Malamute]

As a landlord, you always have had the right to collect damages and to write a contract forbidding such activity.  This law just goes past that and actually may interfere with people rights in the future.

 

A fear campaign for and from landlords to get something they already had.

[bax]

nothing in the MMMA allows someone to destroy a house to grow marijuana.

 

if someone destroyed a house, they are liable for it.

 

only fools think otherwise.

[GregS]

This is one im for.

Im a homeowner and grower and im well aware of the damage that an improperly set up grow can do. From mold, holes in the walls, electrical issues etc.

Id hate to rent my house out to someone who decides to turn the place into a grow op and either didnt care about ruining my house or didnt know any better.

Rental agreements have all sorts of clauses eg. No animals. Marijuana growing should be no different

You have recourse under tort law to recover damages if and when they occur. You are not deprived of that.

[matt79]

Sure of course an individual can get a judgement for damages. Collecting on that judgement is another thing though.

My neighbor just ate 7000 cuz her tenants hadnt paid her rent for 4 months. She will never see that money

[bax]

and that has what to do with the mmma law? nothing.

 

its a part of doing business as a land lord.

dont like risks , losses, or collecting money? dont be a landlord.

 

its that simple

Edited December 22, 2016 by bax

[+Malamute]

Sure of course an individual can get a judgement for damages. Collecting on that judgement is another thing though.

My neighbor just ate 7000 cuz her tenants hadnt paid her rent for 4 months. She will never see that money

 

This new law changes none of that.  At all.

 

 Your recourse has always been in civil court. Occasionally criminal then civil depending.

 

This just states your contract can be used against sick people legally(cannabis patients), even after cannabis is 100% legal across the country, to discriminate against their use of cannabis in their rented property by evicting them and suing for damages. 

 

I get what you are saying matt, I do,.... but just like other landlords, they think directly calling out 180,000 patients as a possible rental hazards is ok. Its not. Cooking bacon is more dangerous. And besides that, everything is exactly as it was. A civil court contract issue.

 

 I mean, you must realize this will likely expand in the future right? Next they will say you cannot even bake marijuana cookies because they smell. Then, no vaping either. Too much like smoking. Then, no possession at all because they "might" use it in the residence.

 

 This is how balls start rolling, espescially against such easy targets like cannabis patients.

[bax]

200.000+ patients.