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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-18-25 Public Comment - R. Creiglow - Support Rights to CounselFrom:Ronda Creiglow To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]Support Rights to Counsel Date:Thursday, April 17, 2025 7:33:08 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear Bozeman City Commision, My name is Ronda and I am a longtime Montana resident who has watched Montana fill up with greed. I used to love Bozeman because the people were nice and friendly. I hike, paddleboard, and do yoga. I work for an environmental company, and stay active in the community. I have lived in this community and made it my home. When I’ve lived places, I feel like I’m going to stay forever and make it my community. I’d stay and fight the fight, if I could afford it. The way things are in Bozeman, the greed of the landlords, I don’t feel like this is my home. They need to be held accountable for their bad behavior. In my previous apartment in a different building, we got a notice that the building had been purchased by a corporation out of California. After they were purchased, everything changed and rents went up. It scares me because you feel like you have no control. They can do whatever they want. I was up at night crying because I couldn’t find an apartment. They just kept raising the rent and changing things. They were happy to see me go because then they could raise the rent even higher. The yearly increases were ridiculous – $200 and up, and we had to pay more for things like parking. It’s like we just did not matter at all. I’d never felt that kind of fear before. After that happened, I have been uncomfortable with apartment life in a whole new way. I felt so insecure at that time, I had trouble sleeping. I don’t ever want to feel like that again. I just can’t imagine going back to that feeling – complete dread. After that experience, I was so happy to get into my new apartment – but then the property manager left, and the lack of maintenance, the buildings and grounds falling apart makes me nervous, like fences and the playground falling down and not getting replaced. Since then, there have been environmental issues and maintenance issues in these apartments, which the management does nothing about. It’s like they just stopped maintaining it. It makes you wonder how far down they’re going to go, and if they’re going to sell it.There should be some safeguards so people feel safe in their homes – and they don’t. Bozeman makes renters feel very unsafe. You don’t know what fresh new hell is going to happen next. If I didn’t have such a good job, I would be out of here. A lot of really good people have left this town because this town doesn’t deserve them. The people who run these buildings treat us like second-class citizens – it’s like we’re annoying to them. It’s degrading. They just want to take your check and you to shut up. There needs to be a safety net for tenants. With the greed, landlords have so many tenants to choose from, that they feel like they can do whatever they want regardless of if it’s right or not. They need to quit evicting people, they need a cap on the rentals, they need to be watched and supervised because obviously they don’t care who they hurt. They don’t care about the people who are currently in these apartments – if they can’t pay the high cost, they’ll find somebody who will. Landlords need to be held responsible for their actions, good and bad. Leaving landlords to their own devices, there’s just too much greed. At any given time you can be homeless. When you’re homeless you can’t afford representation or to get anyone to listen to you, because by then it’s too late – unless you had a whole bunch of money, which you don’t because you’re living in an apartment. If I was threatened with eviction, I’d have to leave town. Attorneys and stopping evictions is a first step in holding landlords responsible for their actions, and giving some safety net to tenants. That’s why I support a Tenant Right to Counsel.