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Oct 28Liked by Jeff Victor

Mr. Crouch lived in Wyoming since 2023. He now has enough knowledge after watching two legislative sessions to consider himself ready to enact legislation for the rest of us. Must be quite the guy. It would be interesting to know his position on city ordinance #1802, setting safety and habitability standards for local rentals and whether, if elected to Cheyenne, he would overturn them.

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Hi Donal, thanks for the question. I originally had a section about the rental ordinance in this story but had to cut it because the story is still 3,500 words without it (lol?)

When I asked Crouch about the rental regulations, he shared a few thoughts:

"I don't think they're doing themselves any favors by putting additional regulations on. ... Some of this is hard to legislate. We need responsible tenants and we need responsible landlords."

"I don't believe what Karlee is doing is helping ... I haven't run into any bad landlords in Laramie. Now maybe there are some, but I haven't found any, and I haven't found any unhappy tenants."

My own experience as an investigative journalist covering this town tells me there are plenty of bad landlords operating in House 45 and no shortage of unhappy tenants forced to accept rentals they wouldn't otherwise because of the housing shortage.

I also asked Provenza about the rental regulations, though her thoughts are already pretty well-known. She spoke in favor of the Housing Code on its third reading before the city council, specifically highlighting the power imbalance. "We have a power problem where one party has all the power and the other doesn't."

When I asked her about the recent legislative efforts to overturn Laramie's rental code, she said Laramie and other communities should have the ability to set their own standards, "but the state should have better standards for the minimum requirements. Currently, we have some requirements for things like heating that are not being met. The state should also create protections for tenants who file complaints, as we have seen people evicted for simply trying to get these basic minimums met by their landlord."

I also asked Crouch explicitly whether he would support another effort, of the kind we've seen, to overturn the rental code. He said, "I don't know. I'd have to read the bill."

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Thank you, Jeff, for the additional information. I will be generous and assume Mr. Crouch is being naïve or ignorant. This is a university town. Of course there are irresponsible landlords, as well as conscientious ones. Given Mr. Crouch's evasive response on whether he would undermine local control if elected, it is a fair assumption he would vote against the interests of many of District 45’s renters.

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Oct 28·edited Oct 28

Hopefully the voters in this district will be smart enough to return a true representative to the legislature and not someone who has lived in the district for a couple minutes. Let the previous election of Janette Ward in Casper be an example of why you don't elect carpet baggers.

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