The housing proposals that Akron voters will consider to eliminate application fees for renters, allow security deposits to be paid over several months and treat people with criminal histories as a protected class have similarities to laws in locations across the country.
Those proposals mirror others in states and cities nationwide, said Raymond Greene Jr., the executive director of Freedom BLOC, which collected signatures to put Issues 11 and 12 on the ballot. But in many cases, the Akron measures go further than those in other places.
They criminalize issues that are civil violations in other places. They don’t have exemptions other jurisdictions have put in place based on the number of properties landlords own or the amount of time since a conviction. And they change the city charter, Akron’s founding document, instead of creating new legislation that can be amended if there is language in the laws that needs to change.
Additionally, despite the comparisons to locations where similar efforts have been made to make access to housing easier for residents, it’s difficult to know if the efforts have actually paid off.
The Greater Akron Chamber (GAC) — which opposes Issues 11 and 12, but said the problems they’re trying to solve are legitimate — conducted research from more than two dozen places that have similar legislation. Signal Akron interviewed officials in Columbus and Seattle to talk about their programs, as well as national advocates to ask about what might happen locally if the two proposals are approved by voters.
In Columbus, which in 2021 passed legislation to allow people to pay security deposits over three- or six-month periods, Melissa Benson said it was hard to know what the actual effect of the change had been. But its intention was similar to what Akron is trying to do — make it easier for people to move quickly, without having to save a substantial security deposit in order to afford to do so.
“We have not really had a lot of data one way or another,” said Benson, the administrator of the Housing Stability Division at the Department of Development in Columbus.
But one of the concerns of Akron opponents about Issue 11 has not been an issue in Columbus, she said.
“It definitely has not affected growth in the city,” Benson said. “Landlords aren’t pulling out of the community. That’s not something that we’ve seen at all.”
In Columbus, Seattle, security deposit extensions have different effects
Donzell Taylor, the CEO and chair of Welty Enterprises, said he’s paused a plan to turn the CitiCenter building downtown into about 115 apartments until he knows the outcome of the two measures. He said he thinks they’re unconstitutional and would expect to challenge them legally.
Benson acknowledged that Akron and Columbus are facing different challenges: “We’re a growing city,” she said, while Akron’s population is largely stagnant.
But Benson said giving people more time to pay a security deposit is a benefit to anyone who’s moving. It allows people to move abruptly to get out of a bad situation, or simply to accept a new opportunity or change neighborhoods.
“We have not seen anything to lead us to believe this has had a negative effect on anything,” Benson said.
That’s not quite the case in Seattle, which a decade ago capped security deposits at the amount of the first month’s rent and allowed people to pay them over up to six months. When the provision was introduced, there were some landlords who charged excessive first-month rents in order to raise the security deposit, said Maureen Roat, the rental programs manager for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection.
But she said that didn’t last — when tenants had the opportunity to move into places that didn’t charge an initial high fee, they chose those instead.
Opponents of Akron’s proposals have said that they will likely result in higher rents. Greene acknowledged that might be the case.
But Roat said that while it “might be true for a minute, I don’t think it holds for the long-term.”
“You’re always going to have reactive landlords,” she said. “Over time, market forces prevail.”
Criminal penalties set Akron apart from other cities
The GAC’s research found four other cities and one state that had enacted the ability to pay security deposits in installments, in addition to Columbus and Seattle. Most exempt some landlords — in Columbus, the rule is for landlords with five or more units, while in Seattle, people renting space in properties they own and occupy are exempt, as a way to ensure that rental units from small landlords stay on the market.
Akron’s proposal has no exceptions based on how many units someone owns.
Additionally, other locations have civil penalties, while Akron’s would be criminal — something that Roat said gave her pause. She said Seattle has other enforcement measures and no landlord has been penalized since the law went into effect.
But she did praise language that requires Akron landlords to notify potential tenants of their ability to request to pay the deposit over time. In Seattle, she said, tenants have to know to ask.
Eliminating fees could help people save money as they seek housing
At the Center for American Progress, senior fellow Chad Maisel has advocated for a national $5 cap on application fees for rental units. But he said there are a lot of good reasons for scrapping the fees altogether, as Akron’s proposal would do.
The application fee, Maisel said, “can really add up to be a huge pain point for renters.”
In Vermont and Massachusetts, which have no application fees, there has been no evidence of increased fraud in rental applications, Maisel said, a concern that landlords have articulated about eliminating the fee. A case study in the United Kingdom, which also capped application fees, indicated savings for renters.
“There’s no reason it should be a revenue generator,” Maisel said of the fees.
Maisel said he hadn’t seen a proposal like Akron’s that combines the security deposit and application fees and makes changes to the city charter. But he said everyone benefits from a housing market where people can move freely.
GAC’s research found two cities and eight states that had eliminated or capped application fees. Vermont and Massachusetts are the only places to completely ban application fees. In those two states, the penalties are civil, while Akron’s are criminal.
In Massachusetts, landlords screen applicants at their own expense and consider it a cost of doing business. In Vermont, a 2025 sample showed that some landlords were instead charging credit-check fees of up to $25.
There are some limits on what properties managed by third-party groups can charge in fees in Ohio, said Jyoshu Tsushima, managing attorney for the housing practice group of Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio.
But Tsushima said enforcement is an issue. And when people are in a desperate situation, they’re willing to pay.
“The potential impact it would have if fees are stripped — people would actually be able to save money,” he said.
Formerly incarcerated are more likely to be homeless or housing insecure
In addition to making it easier for people to afford to move, the Freedom BLOC proposals seek to make it easier for people to find housing. Issue 12 would target people who have criminal histories, who often have more trouble finding a place to live.
The measure would prohibit people from declining to rent to, or engage in real estate transactions with, people who have a criminal history. GAC research shows a dozen cities and counties, and two states, that have some kind of limit on how landlords use criminal records.
In 2018, an ordinance went into effect in Seattle that prevented landlords from “unfairly denying” applicants housing based on criminal history. It was enforced by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights until a 2023 court ruling stopped the enforcement of the portion of the rule that bans a landlord from asking about it.
Lenée Son with the civil rights office said she couldn’t answer questions about the effect of the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, including whether it has changed access to housing, the cost of rent or landlords’ willingness to rent in the city.
People who have been to prison are 10 times more likely than the general population to be homeless or housing insecure, said Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist at the Prison Policy Initiative. She said she sees proposals like Akron’s as a way to stop the revolving door that leads people to recidivism.
But she said there are potential areas of litigation in the Issue 12 charter amendment and said the best way to ensure people have housing is to build more of it.
“It could be a really effective policy or a really ineffective policy,” Bertram said. “When there’s a shortage of anything, and someone is deciding who gets it and who doesn’t, when people are undesirable, people find ways to exclude those people.”
She also questioned the language of the proposal, which has exceptions for sex offenders and arson offenders. Eliminating carve-outs is a good thing, Bertram said.
Criminal history proposal echoes Unify Akron suggestion
The intention to make it easier for people who have a criminal history to find housing was also a priority of Unify Akron’s Civic Assembly, a group that made a series of housing recommendations to the city. Both proposals would remove the automatic rejection of rental applicants based on criminal history. But there are differences in the proposals.
The Unify Akron proposal had a defined lookback period regarding how recently criminal history could be considered; Issue 12 does not. The Unify Akron proposal also recommends training for landlords and reentry support for tenants, while the ballot language for Issue 12 is silent on both those requirements.
Bertram said criminal history can often be a proxy for racial discrimination, and while it’s possible the proposal could make a big difference for people by removing an obstacle, “it also could swing the other way.” In Minneapolis, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank in 2023 found that a policy that restricted the use of background checks and other checks in that city led to an increase in discrimination against Black men.
She said if Issue 12 is approved by voters, she expects landlords to fight its implementation.
“Property owners tend to have more resources to fight these things than poor people who don’t have housing,” Bertram said.
Issues 11 and 12 would change the Akron city charter
Across the proposals, opponents said they have concerns about what would happen if something needs to change if Issues 11 and 12 pass. Roat, in Seattle, said while the security deposit rules there were put in place to solve the problem of people getting into housing, it would have been helpful to close the loophole that allowed landlords to raise the first month’s rent to cover the desired security deposit.
Since Issues 11 and 12 are both charter amendments, they would change Akron’s guiding document. Steve Millard, the president and CEO of the Greater Akron Chamber, said he’s worried that any tweak of the laws would need to go back to voters. The Chamber’s research shows other jurisdictions that changed their laws did so legislatively. Akron Mayor Shammas Malik has also come out against the proposals, in part because they would amend the city charter.
Across the country, many of the rules are too new to know exactly what effect they’re having, or there is no one tracking those effects. Tsushima, at Legal Aid in Columbus, said he would anticipate that, if passed, Issues 11 and 12 would help address the problems they’re trying to solve. But what solutions are the most effective? He’s not sure.
“Is this the way I would go about it? I don’t know,” he said. “I do see the potential benefit.”
Ballot language for Issues 11 and 12
Issue 11: Shall the Charter of the City of Akron be amended to enact Section 101b so as to require property owners or operators to permit security deposits for residential rentals to be paid over three or six month periods; to require operators to inform tenants or prospective tenants of their right to make security deposit payments over three or six months; criminalizing the failure to provide the notification; banning fees, charges, deposits or other payments prior to executing rental agreements for residential rental properties; and criminalizing the collection of an application fee for residential rentals?
Issue 12: Shall the Charter of the City of Akron be amended to enact Section 100a to add the City of Akron’s existing codified anti-discrimination protections in the Charter; to, with exceptions for sex offenders and arson offenders, prohibit owners and operators from declining to rent to, or engage in real estate transaction with, an individual on the basis of that individual’s criminal history such as arrests, convictions, incarceration; making individuals with criminal histories a protected class similar to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other existing protected classes as it relates to renting, home sales, and other real estate transactions; giving Akron Civil Rights Commission jurisdiction over all real estate discrimination claims arising in Akron; and requiring City Council to enact implementing legislation within ninety (90) days of the effective date of this amendment?
