Issue Position: Domestic Violence

Issue Position

In 2017, I started working on legislation that would allow victims of domestic violence to break their leases without an early termination penalty. For some victims, the early termination penalty is an economic barrier that keeps them in dangerous situations. I researched the problem and found that many states had enacted legislation to allow victims of domestic violence to break their leases without an early termination penalty. I thought we should do this in Georgia.

I filed the Georgia Tenant Victim Protection Act as House Bill 281. I used this to engage in a conversation with the relevant stakeholders, such as apartment owners and realtors.

We spent many hours working on the bill throughout 2017 to improve the legislation so that all parties could be supportive. I then drafted and filed House Bill 745. This legislation represented a bill that all of the stakeholders could support, and it had bipartisan sponsors.

A week after it was filed, one of the co-sponsor's opted to file an almost exact duplicate bill under her name with only Republican sponsors. That bill was House Bill 834.

Since my primary concern is the policy, I was happy to support House Bill 834. In fact, during the subcommittee hearing, my vote in favor of this measure kept it alive and was the deciding vote. Ultimately, the legislation passed unanimously in both the House and Senate, and I spoke in favor of it. The governor signed the bill and it is now law.

This legislation will save lives.

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