Updated on February 22, 2021.

Renter-rights advocates are condemning signs that urge Burlington voters to protect tenants of color by rejecting a ballot item that would ban no-cause evictions. The proposal, the advocates say, would help, not harm, those tenants.

"Vote No on #5 Just Cause," the signs say. "Protect BIPOC tenants from racist neighbors."

The unsigned messages, which appeared along heavily trafficked public rights of way, seem to suggest that if Question 5 passes this Town Meeting Day, landlords would not be able to evict tenants who harass neighbors who are Black, Indigenous and other people of color.

The orange and white placards drew ire from proponents of the ballot item, including City Councilor Zoraya Hightower (P-Ward 1), who last year became the first woman of color to be elected to the council.

 "This is about power wanting to maintain power," Hightower said in a video that she posted to Twitter last week. "The fact that they're using racial justice language to justify hurting BIPOC people is disgusting."
Sunday evening, Burlington landlord Betsy Allen-Pennebaker owned up to crafting the signs' messaging. She said she's part of a group of "mostly landlords" who came up with the slogan. Other signs with similar color and design include more benign messages, such as "Just cause = higher rent."

Allen-Pennebaker, a 20-year Burlington resident and Champlain College professor, has been a vocal opponent of just cause-evictions. Some years ago, she was only able to get rid of a tenant who had sexually harassed her by threatening him with a no-cause eviction, she said. She put one of her apartment houses on the market after learning about the Queen City ballot initiative, fearing that if it passed, she'd have no recourse in a similar situation, she said.
While Allen-Pennebaker said she believes that no-cause evictions can protect vulnerable tenants — and has heard of landlords using them to evict homophobic renters — she realized after seeing social media posts that her signs' messaging "was a colossal failure of thought."

"It made it seem like [no-cause eviction] is the best protection for people of color, and I don't think that is accurate," she said, calling the signs one of her worst decisions.

"The intention is irrelevant and the impact is everything, and the impact of it was horribly racist," she added.

A 2020 study by the Princeton Eviction Lab found that Black renters faced eviction twice as often as white renters and that women face a higher risk of eviction than men. In an apology letter obtained by Seven Days, Allen-Pennebaker wrote that the signs "misrepresented and trivialized — unforgivably — the suffering of people of color."

Political campaigns frequently co-opt an opponents' rhetoric, but "the use by a white person of the social and intellectual capital of a person of color takes on a very different meaning," Allen-Pennebaker wrote. "It becomes yet another act of appropriation and a morally reprehensible thing to do."

"It was a toxic, dreadful mistake that I will always regret," she continued.

Allen-Pennebaker sent the letter to Hightower and to the Just Cause Coalition, an arm of political advocacy group Rights and Democracy that is leading the just-cause effort.


The Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, another just-cause proponent, issued a statement Friday saying the signs "are not supported by evidence or research."

"While we know that a Just Cause ordinance is not a silver bullet in solving the nation’s eviction crisis, nor in remedying the United States’ history of discriminatory housing politics, prohibiting evictions that occur with no cause is a critical step in the right direction that would ultimately increase protections for historically marginalized communities," the statement says.

By Saturday morning, the signs had mostly disappeared.

Allen-Pennebaker said she doesn't know how much the signs cost, how many were printed or how many people are involved in the campaign. She said she hopes the others come forward.

"This is not all I am. This is me at my worst, and at my best, I am better," she said. "I’m just so ashamed."