A bill that would limit the number of times a person can be contacted regarding unsolicited offers to purchase their property passed unanimously in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee on Tuesday, receiving bipartisan support.
“I wanted to put in place some guardrails to say ‘People should not be able to take advantage of vulnerable citizens and try to pressure them to sell their home, and then turn around and flip that property for two or three times the amount and profit off of it,’” says Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville), who filed the legislation.
Charlane Oliver
This is the first bill filed by the recently elected Nashville Democrat, and she says it was inspired by her time as a community organizer. Oliver founded the Equity Alliance, which does work surrounding racial justice, specifically with the Black community in North Nashville. With the Equity Alliance, Oliver worked to respond to Nashville’s catastrophic March 2020 tornado.
“What I knew was that that was going to be a prime opportunity for developers who are already building these tall-and-skinnies to accelerate rapid gentrification by taking advantage of these people who are now vulnerable and looking to repair their homes,” says Oliver, “and try to profit off of these people who may not know what to do in that situation.”
In addition to the bill’s unanimous passage through its first committee meeting, Oliver says she has been encouraged by support from not only her constituents and other community organizations, but from conversations with the state attorney general’s office, which she says is in support of the bill.
Oliver’s legislation would not fully cut off contact between solicitors and homeowners. She says that if people want to sell their homes, she wants to make sure they still can. The bill would allow developers to contact homeowners once per calendar year, and an amendment exempts licensed real estate agents who are working in the homeowner’s best interest.
“This is designed to really tamp down the amount of harassment people are getting,” says Oliver. “I get these just about every day. I'm getting so many calls from people all across the state. There are even other members of the legislature like, ‘Yeah, I get them.’”
The bill is scheduled to go before the House Banking and Consumer Affairs subcommittee on March 21, and could hit the Senate floor sometime in the next two weeks.
