When Tianna Tinsley got behind on rent at her last apartment, she says the eviction process led to legal fees that have made it difficult to pay what she owes and afford anything else besides rent.
Online records show Tinsley's former landlord at the Treehouse Apartments in eastern Henrico, which is owned by the Richmond-based private company General Services Corporation, moved forward with eviction proceedings against her four times since March 2025.
After the hearings, the Henrico General District Court ordered Tinsley to pay attorney fees and other charges, records show.
Tinsley says it was a constant struggle to stay above water.
"Every single dollar was going towards rent and nothing else, which was the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced," she told VPM News. "How do you think I'm supposed to get caught up if every single dollar is going to the attorney fees before the rent?"
While Tinsley says she was able to avoid eviction and moved to another apartment complex in Henrico, she estimates she owes close to $3,000 still, with more than $2,000 for her former landlords' attorney costs and late fees. She says she's due in court in April and hopes to get some of the fees reduced.
Tinsley said the timing of her paychecks didn't always align with when her rent or other bills were due, which only made it harder to keep up with the payments.
General Services Corporation did not respond to messages seeking comment.
State Democrats campaigned primarily on making life more affordable for Virginians on the way to sweeping three statewide elections and widening the party's majority in the House of Delegates last year.
On the heels of those election wins, Democrats made housing a top focus with several bills for the 2026 General Assembly session.
Del. Cia Price (D–Newport News) says legislation that she and other Democrats are behind aims to give renters like Tinsley a little more time to avoid an eviction hearing. HB15 would give tenants 14 days to pay off late rent, not five as in current law, before a landlord can try to evict them.
While some disagree on the legislative approach, policymakers and other stakeholders agree that tackling Virginia's housing issues for renters can't rely on one path. They say it needs multiple solutions, including working with developers and investing more state funding in affordable housing initiatives and to support eviction diversion.
Price has carried legislation like HB15 to extend Virginia's "pay or quit" period five times as a state legislature. The measure passed both chambers last year, but was vetoed by Republican former Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
"By expanding it from five to 14 days, it gives them that opportunity to get to that next check," Price said about her bill.
Patrick McCloud is CEO of the Virginia Apartment Management Association, an organization with members (including General Services Corporation) that collectively own more than 310,000 rental units in the commonwealth.
McCloud argued that Price's legislation could potentially expose tenants to even larger late fees, all while driving away housing developers that can build more affordable rental units.
Virginia law says tenants must pay everything they owe, including possible attorney fees and late charges, to halt an eviction. Landlords are also required to inform tenants that a partial payment of rent won't prevent an eviction.
McCloud said the court filing is just a first step, and that renters often have months to catch up on unpaid rent while undergoing the process, which includes waiting for a court hearing.
Other critics of the measure argue that tenants have last-minute options, such as the "right to redemption," to pay off what they owe up to two business days before a scheduled eviction.
Price said she wants to help people avoid going to court for an eviction hearing.
"Once you have that eviction process on your record, it is very hard to get housing anywhere else," she told VPM News. "We're trying to prevent the whole process."
Under a 2024 law, people in Virginia automatically get eviction proceedings removed from their court record after 30 days if the case is dismissed, or six months after a landlord drops the lawsuit.
Before, people would have to petition the court to have them expunged.
According to Princeton University's Eviction Lab, there were over 135,000 eviction filings in Virginia over the past year. Richmond, which has had a history of high evictions, has the second highest eviction filing rate of any city that Princeton's Eviction Lab tracks.
Since last February, the Eviction Lab says eviction filings have been made against nearly 25% of Richmond City renters. That figure is close to 24% in neighboring Chesterfield County and just over 21% in Henrico.
According to a state Housing Commission report, 16–17% of eviction filings in Virginia led to an eviction over between July 2023 and the end of June 2024.
Renters in Virginia face another stark reality: Prices continue to rise, and there aren't enough affordable units.
Fewer Virginians can afford to buy a home because of rising prices, according to a 2021 report from JLARC, the General Assembly's research agency. But JLARC's report found Virginia lacks enough affordable rental units to meet needs, too.
"Renting a home can help households avoid the upfront costs of purchasing a home, but Virginia has a statewide shortage of at least 200,000 affordable rental units for extremely and very low-income households," the report states.
JLARC's analysis found Central Virginia needed to add more than 35,000 affordable units, including almost 12,000 in the City of Richmond alone, to meet demand.
And an analysis from the trade association Virginia Realtors found the average price of a rental unit statewide was north of $1,800, with it being more than $2,300 in Northern Virginia and more than $1,500 in the Richmond metro area.
In 2019, roughly 29% of Virginia households were house cost-burdened — meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing, per the JLARC report. Renters are more likely to be cost-burdened than homeowners.
A review of 2024 survey data from the US Census Bureau by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group, found 87% of renters below or at the poverty line are cost-burdened.
Laura Dobbs, policy director at the nonprofit Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, raised concerns over increasing rents and more private equity firms buying up housing in Virginia, particularly mobile home parks.
Private equity firms have faced accusations of having rental units with poor living conditions. A 2025 report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit watchdog group, found that private equity firms own 20% of Richmond's apartment units.
What other housing bills are Democrats trying to pass?
State Democrats have put forth other proposals they say aim to help tenants that appear to be headed to Gov. Abigail Spanberger's desk.
One bill would allow local governments to help tenants seek court injunctions and damages if a landlord doesn't address health and safety issues.
Another would let people being sued for unpaid rent avoid payments to their landlord while a case is ongoing if they're arguing that their landlord isn't complying with rules to address certain safety and health hazards.
HB95 would make landlords with more than four rental units, a benchmark set in Virginia's Landlord and Tenant Act, give tenants they are trying to evict a written notice with the exact amount they owe including any late fees, and to offer a monthly payment plan. The bill, which is moving ahead for a final vote, only covers cases in which the tenant owes less than or equal to one month's rent and late charges.
Other efforts, like a bill to stop landlords from raising rent more than 3% in one year, were kicked to the 2027 session.
McCloud says the apartment management association zeros in on two questions when a new bill comes forward: Does it increase housing opportunities, and does it lower costs by increasing supply?
"Because ultimately, affordability is about supply," he said. "We can look right now at markets like Denver, markets like Austin, Texas — those have actually had rents decrease because they have delivered on supply."
McCloud says the measure requiring landlords to offer monthly payment plans "is particularly concerning" for the Virginia Apartment Management Association. He said the group fears it will harm tenants with financial difficulties who miss a payment.
"Instead of the first filing having about $2,000 of debt attached to it, you would now have the first filing with $4,000 debt attached to it, because you've now waited twice as long to get into the court process," McCloud said.
Isabel McLain, policy and advocacy director for the Virginia Housing Alliance, says 2026 has been an "exciting year" for housing policy.
"There is very much a need to respond to our housing crisis with public investment, especially with a lot of threats in D.C. to funding for housing that we receive from the federal government," she said, noting Virginia's reliance on federal dollars.
The budget proposals passed by both General Assembly chambers include funding for affordable housing efforts.
The House of Delegates wants to set aside $12.5 million for the Virginia Housing Trust Fund and $10 million for the state's Eviction Reduction Program in the fiscal year that starts in July. (Virginia's fiscal year runs July 1–June 30.)
The spending plan from the Senate goes further with both, including $13 million for the eviction reduction program and $50 million for the trust fund.
Del. Cia Price says she's optimistic about the policies being considered.
However, she acknowledged the need to involve developers and for both localities and the state to prioritize affordable housing with long-term investments: "I can see the future that if we're not doing these things, if we're not taking care of people and keeping them housed, we will see a crisis of epic proportions as it pertains to our families."
According to Price, underfunding efforts to bolster Virginia's housing supply with more affordable options will eventually make other state priorities more expensive.
"It impacts what we're going to spend on health, what we're going to spend on education when we have chronic absenteeism," Price said. "If you don't have a safe place for your family to live, school becomes a secondary concern to finding shelter."
The 2026 legislative session is slated to end sine die on Saturday, March 14.
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