Advocates aren’t quite sure what to make of the attorney general’s advocacy yet. (Lauren Chapman / IPB News)
Indiana’s long-struggling tenants protection movement counts an unlikely potential champion among its ranks: Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita, who’s led multiple legal battles on behalf of “severely mistreated” renters, with mixed results.
Republican state lawmakers have long resisted taking up legislation strengthening tenants’ legal rights, making Rokita an outlier at the state level — but a possible ally for advocates who’ve struggled to advance such changes.
And it’s a departure for an attorney general who has focused much of his efforts on hot-button “culture war” topics like abortion, transgender rights and more.
“We will not hesitate to hold any landlord accountable that seeks to deny tenants equal protection of our laws,” Rokita wrote in an August 14 post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
He was announcing a new legal win: commitments from the Indianapolis Housing Agency to “rectify miserable living conditions” at the Lugar Tower Apartments, according to a news release.
The public housing agency, he said, had “severely mistreated its tenants.”
It was the latest of numerous battles Rokita has waged against purveyors of badly kept rentals. And he’s taken his efforts to the Statehouse: this session, a legal mechanism his office asked for flew through the Legislature, although a separate move failed.
The Office of the Attorney General didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment from the Capital Chronicle.
Prosperity Indiana — a statewide group that has worked for housing improvements — said Indiana’s housing affordability and stability crisis continues to be a top concern.
“We’ve seen evidence that the lack of enforcement of Indiana’s habitability standards artificially decreases the state’s stock of affordable and available housing and endangers the health, safety, and economic freedoms of the most vulnerable Hoosiers,” said Policy Director Andrew Bradley. “We’re encouraged by the steps that Attorney General Rokita has taken so far to address Indiana’s significant substandard housing problem and look forward to learning more about future legislative efforts.”
Legal landscape
Indiana’s rental laws are largely landlord-friendly.
Owners need only provide a 10-day notice prior to removing tenants, and have 45 days to return deposits.
Indiana Code also bars tenants from paying into court-approved escrow accounts to force their landlords into making critical repairs. Tenants also cannot withhold rent, then obtain landlord reimbursement, to pay for the repairs themselves.
And state lawmakers have acted to prevent local maneuvers.
When, in 2020, Indianapolis approved tenants rights-and-responsibilities and landlord anti-retaliation provisions, the Legislature removed that authority — and reaffirmed its will over a veto by Gov. Eric Holcomb.
Housing advocates want the reverse: habitability standards enforced through rent-witholding or repair-and-deduct mechanisms, and greater local control.
That may include Rokita, to some degree.
“Our state lawmakers seriously need to update and strengthen our housing laws to make it easier to hold abusive landlords accountable,” he posted on July 31. But his office declined to specifically outline how legislators could act.
Attempts at change
Tenant protection efforts have generally failed at the Statehouse.
Sen. Fady Qaddoura, a Democrat representing Indianapolis, has filed multiple bills with habitability standards, repair-and-deduct, rent escrow and other provisions.
They are among many such bills that haven’t advanced — usually without ever having been heard by their assigned committees.
Qaddoura’s and Rokita’s public advocacy originates in the saga of an infamous nonprofit housing provider operating in the Indianapolis area. New Jersey-based JPC Charities faced utility shutoffs, lawsuits and ownership changes over dangerous living conditions and rent payment mismanagement at multiple former properties.
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Rokita’s office sued JPC and its network of nonprofits twice unsuccessfully. The third time, a judge commanded that the organizations liquidate assets and pay creditors — and banned them from operating in Indiana for seven years.
“We assembled a strong alliance around the issue,” Qaddoura said, which he said included nonprofit organizations, Indianapolis’ police and fire departments and Rokita’s office.
But, he noted, “It took three years to address one negligent out-of-state landlord.”
Rokita’s office asked lawmakers for legal changes related to the JPC case.
Senate Enrolled Act 114, which allows utility companies to ask courts to appoint receivers over certain landlords behind on their utility bills, passed easily.
But language in House Bill 1075 authorizing the attorney general to take action against “public benefit corporations” mismanaging assets or committing other “breach(es) of duty” didn’t become law. Rokita posted in February thanking Rep. Chris Jeter for authoring the bill.
Neither did the original language in Qaddoura’s Senate Bill 202, which would’ve set habitability standards and empowered the attorney general to take action. Lawmakers instead turned the bill into a commitment to study remedies, but it still died.
Uncertain future
Since JPC, Rokita’s office has touted its efforts in two more Indianapolis-area cases: that of public housing complex Lugar Towers and Willow Brook Apartments.
“We are here to protect Hoosiers,” Rokita said in a July 12 news release announcing a civil lawsuit against Willow Brook and property manager Beztak Properties. “That’s why we regularly take action against businesses doing harm to consumers through either negligent or willful misconduct.”
“This case represents just one more instance in which we are defending the rule of law and standing up for the little guy,” Rokita continued. “This case represents yet another example of out-of-state real estate investors seeking to put their heel on the neck of working-class Hoosiers. Our office will not allow that kind of conduct to continue.”
Some advocates aren’t sure yet if Rokita’s office will take on the full gamut of bad landlords, or maintain a focus on government, nonprofit and non-local providers.
Qaddoura said he appreciated the office’s work when it came to housing.
“There are many policies that I fiercely oppose … that come out of the attorney general’s office. And I’ve made my opinions very clear on many of his politically motivated statements, actions, behaviors and programs,” Qaddoura said.
“However, on the issue of going after negligent out-of-state landlords such as JPC, all I asked from the attorney general’s office was to perform their professional duty of … protecting Hoosiers against criminals,” he continued, calling the office’s Homeowner Protection Unit “very professional, very responsive.”
