S.B. 187 Renter Credit Reporting Amendments

What this bill does

The bill, as substituted, would create a pilot program in which the Salt Lake City Housing Authority reports tenants' timely rent payments to credit bureaus, if the tenant requests it. The housing authority would cover the reporting costs for its roughly 1,500 units.

Plain-English summary written by AI from the sponsor’s presentation in committee and on the floor. Check the official text below.

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Every vote

• 4 yes, 0 no, 3 absentSenate Revenue and Taxation Committee: vote to change the bill · Feb 25, 2026Who voted how
• 4 yes, 0 no, 3 absentSenate Revenue and Taxation Committee: Amendment Recommendation · Feb 25, 2026Who voted how
• 2 yes, 2 no, 3 absentSenate Revenue and Taxation Committee: Senate vote, which failed · Feb 25, 2026Who voted how

Hearings and debates

• Feb 2, 2026 Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee
• Feb 25, 2026 Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee▶ Watch
  Transcript (19 turns)

  1. Committee chair49:52

     So let's go back to item number one for Senate Bill 180 7, uh, renter credit reporting amendments representative pitcher or Senator Pitcher.

  2. Sen. Stephanie Pitcher50:04

     Thank you. Good morning. Um, I'll be presenting to the first sub today, which should be online. Um, Why don't we do that real quick? Uh, Senator Harper, do you want to make a motion to delete and replace, uh, first Senate bill? Senate bill 180 7? Yeah. Move to the entitled Embody Senate Bill 180 7 Replaced with first substitute sent Bill 180 7. And that motion's in order. Would you like to speak to that? No. Okay. The motion before us is to adopt first substitute Senate bill 180 7. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passage Unanimously, uh, I heard an extra. Aye. Is there four now or five online? There's just four two online. Okay. Yeah. Alright. That passage unanimously four to zero. The bill is substituted. Senator Pitcher. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. This bill, uh, addresses, uh, rental reporting, uh, or reporting of timely rent payments. And the bill started as, um, it started as a requirement for any entity that receives any type of public funding, uh, that they would, if the renter so requested, they would report an individual's rent payments. And this is important, I think, for individuals who are renting, but aspire to home ownership and need to build credit. Uh, one great way that they can do so is to have those rental payments count. Now they do it of course, at their own risk if they don't make timely payments, that would also need to be reported. Um, however, in, in working with the stakeholders, understand that, uh, because of the complicated nature that private landlords do receive some amount of public funding, it, it didn't seem like it was going to work. And so what you're seeing instead it's in the first sub is a pilot program with a housing authority in, uh, a city of the, of a county of the first class. So we're talking about the Salt Lake City Housing Authority, uh, that will pilot this amongst the, uh, units that they oversee. So they've got about 1500 units. Um, and not only are they willing to sort of roll this out, but we'll also cover the cost of, of making that report. Um, and so I've invited Dan Ackerman with the Salt Lake City Housing Authority to provide a little more context about how this will play out. Um, so I'll give a little time to him.

  3. Unknown speaker52:21speaker not certain

     Sure. Sorry, your mic's on. There you go. Oh, I think you're good.

  4. Daniel Nackerman, Housing Authority of Salt Lake City52:27

     Okay. Thank you Senator. Um, and thank you Senator Vickers. Uh, my name is Dan Ackerman. I'm the president of a large nonprofit called Ham that develops many properties. Also the executive director of the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City, the largest housing authority in Utah. As, uh, Senator Pitcher mentioned, we own 35 properties. We also house a total of 11,000 people every day and every night through our various programs, uh, uh, we do deal with credit reporting, as you might expect. And credit reporting can be unfair. I'm not saying that the victims of that are victims, but as an example, many of our younger and our senior, and I'm stereotyping on purpose, uh, often have, uh, medical, um, elements on their standard credit reports. And yet at the same time, there's, uh, 6,000 households on our waiting list waiting to be housed. That between us and the County Housing Authority. Uh, so we, we want quality housing, we want quality properties, but like all landlords, we want timely rent payments. Uh, and we think this is a trend that is starting to happen nationwide wherein major credit agencies are paying more attention to things like rent payments and less attention to things like medical bills. Uh, we would plug, uh, probably 500 to 800, uh, households in voluntarily. This is completely a voluntary program, uh, that may spread to, we pay 800 private landlords every month to, and this could spread voluntarily to those private landlords. So we really think this is very pro landlord and it's also pro resonant and will help actually streamline some of the processing of background checks since this is the omnipresent, um, element of those background checks. This would be in place for, uh, 18 months. Uh, by the way, we pay those private landlords $40 million a year that's right here in this immediate area. Um, and we are a $70 million organization. Um, we, we have a combination of market rate, affordable and previously unhoused or, or previously homeless. So we, uh, we really would be honored to launch this for the State of Utah on a relatively small scale. And we are very confident that once, uh, the structure's in place and others see this, that not only will other housing authorities jump on the wagon, but many private landlords will as well.

  5. Committee chair55:43

     Okay. Does that conclude your presentation? That it does. Thank you. Okay. I'll bring it back to the committee for questions on the bill. Okay. Not seeing any, um, we'll take this to the public for public comment. See a couple hands at the back. Don't you come forward, introduce yourselves really quickly.

  6. Justin Allen, Rental Housing Association56:21

     Justin Allen with the Rental Housing Housing Association, and, uh, we really appreciate Senator Pitcher working with us on this. We did have some concerns about the original bill and just, um, concerns about kind of the administrative burden on landlords from, um, you know, some of the things that were in the bill and, and the bill capping the ability to charge additionally for some of those administrative things that were in the bill. So we really appreciate her working with this. We share the goal of trying to assist renters, um, build good credit. There is some mixed, um, opinions within kind of the industry on the best ways to do that, but we definitely plan to, um, try to do some, um, voluntary, um, training of our property managers on some of those strategies. And, and we, we, uh, support this substitute. We, we would maybe support. Um, we've talked with some of you about maybe an additional concept of, of limiting this to just the properties that are owned by the Salt Lake Housing Authority, um, for this pilot test. Um, and, and, and with that, um, would be, um, supportive of this pilot. And again, really appreciate Senator Pitcher, so appreciate it.

  7. Committee chair57:33

     Are you suggesting an amendment or,

  8. Justin Allen, Rental Housing Association57:36

     Um, I, I think that that would be, um, a, a good policy change if there was an amendment that did, um, clarify that it, these are just dealing with properties owned by the, the Housing authority. Let's see, As we were reading the sub, I think, um, on roughly line 41 or so, I think is where maybe that might make sense. I am pulling that up real quick just to see. It's such a big bill. Um, it's not the sub. Yeah, sorry. The sub's online and I don't have a printout. Gimme one second.

  9. Committee chair58:27speaker not certain

     Okay. I've got that in front of me. Uh, I do see line 41. And you're saying after the word, that would be for a rental unit that is owned by the housing authority For a rental unit that is owned by the housing authority? Yeah, I think that would work. Okay. We'll, we'll look at that and see if we can figure that out. I, I don't mind doing that on the fly, but at the same time, it might be good to, I know Senator a picture, if she says she's good for making that amendment, she'll, she'll do it on the floor just easily. So, uh, we're happy either way. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Yep. Next up.

  10. Al Bingham, Author and Credit Expert59:17

      Uh, thanks Mr. Chair helping a, um, author, credit expert media consultant. I and I, I Loa Senator Pitcher here for her efforts. I, I'm not for or against the bill, I'm just telling you he explaining, uh, a crazy system. It's just unfortunate. Um, I, I refer to a couple of of stories that were done. One by Christina Flores, uh, channel two here just a month ago. Um, paid services offering to improve credit scores, make little difference. And then also there was a story written by Sarah, a Augustino home buyers are paying more for mortgage credit checks. Here's why I wanna refer to a couple things, and I, I don't fault, I sent her a picture on this. I fault the credit agencies, they distribute misinformation that is just, they've been fine for it, but people that really understand the system, they go, they generate misinformation and they basically put us on a wild goose chase. And so in the story with Christina Flores, she writes, um, she was talking about, um, you know, put rent payments, utility payments. There isn't a whole lot of benefit to the consumer. Um, there are more than 80 different credit scores used across the loan industry. While some newer alternative scores may factor in rent, utility, and cell phone payments only a small number of scores known as the classic FICO scores are typically used to determine eligibility for a home loan. So that means there's only three scores they used utilized for home loan payments. And they're, they're the base models. I mean, they've been around since 1989 and unfortunately, you know, the, the discussion about the credit agencies are taking in utility and rent payments. That is true. But do they impact the qualifications of a home buyer? They do not. I hate to inform everyone. They do not. In fact, Sarah O'Brien writes, or Sarah Augustino, she writes in her, her report, she talked about this, she said the particular vantage score that was created in 2006 utilizes, um, alternative data such as ran utility payments. However, the vantage score is not yet deployed. So basically the only one that benefits off of this right now are the credit agencies. It's not being determined in the classic FICO scores. And so that's why I throw caution on this. Again, I'm not for or against this, but I, you know, if we're gonna go out to consumers, go out with people thinking they're improving their credit scores so that they maybe can buy a house or something like that, that will not happen here. And it's unfortunately just dealing with the complexities of the, of the system. So their scores are not gonna move because of rent payments or utility payments on their credit report. So.

  11. Committee chair1:02:07

      Okay. I appreciate that. We do me a favor. I missed at the beginning. Did you tell us your name and where

  12. Al Bingham, Author and Credit Expert1:02:11

      You're from? Ingham. Ingham. I'm an author. I do a lot of media consultant. I testify in court cases on credit. So unfortunately I'm just here trying to tell you explain a system that is crazy. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. As society gets more sophisticated, it seems our systems get more redundant and less helpful. So there we are sometimes. Appreciate that Mr. Bingham.

  13. Committee chair1:02:35

      Okay. Uh, I think that concludes public comment. Is there anybody online I should check there first. Okay. I think that concludes public comment. So we'll bring it back to the committee. Um, I am curious your thoughts. Let me ask you first, uh, thoughts about Mr. Allen's suggestion for line 41, uh, that, that minor amendment your thoughts?

  14. Sen. Stephanie Pitcher1:03:05

      Yeah, that was the intent of the bill and so I think that additional clarity is, is helpful.

  15. Committee chair1:03:11

      Okay. Um hmm. I'm trying to decide, uh, as I look at it, as I look at Line 41 says, that enters into a rental agreement with a renter, um, that we add end of line for a rental unit that is owned by the housing authority. That's okay. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay. I, Senator Harper, do you wanna help with that amendment? I'll help with the language. If you'll just make the motion, that'd be helpful.

  16. Sen. Wayne A. Harper1:03:43

      Yeah, I'll move that verbal amendment. Okay.

  17. Committee chair1:03:46

      So the verbal amendment is to add at the end of line 41 for a rental unit that is owned by the Housing Authority. Uh, let me ask you, is it matter if it says owned or controlled? Is there a difference between the two? Okay. There's, they're saying owned is better, so we'll stick with owned. Okay. So we would add to the end of line 41. Senator Harper's motion is to add to the end of line 41 the words for a rental unit that is owned by the housing authority. And that's the, that would be the new end of the line is authority. All in favor of that motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Okay. And that passes unanimously and the bill is amended. Thank you very much. Senator Pitcher now to the bill. Senator Harper, I'm not ready to make a motion. Okay. You're just my in person. Uh, I got maybe Senator Brammer?

  18. Sen. Luz Escamilla1:04:43

      Yes, I'm, I'm ready. Mr. Senator Escamilla. Okay. That'd be great. Thanks. Senator Escamilla? Yes. Senate Bill 180 7. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm so moved to pass the bill as amended. Okay.

  19. Committee chair1:04:53

      The motion is to pass first substitute Senate bill 180 7 as amended. Any discussion of that motion? Seeing none will go to the sponsor for summation. I'll waive shall waive. All in favor? Place that motion. All in favor of passing first substitute Senate bill 180 7 as amended, please say Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any Is Senator Fillmore still online? No. Okay. Any opposed? No. No. Okay. Unfortunately, we are at a tie which gets us, uh, a tie of two to, uh, uh, two to two. Um, so we'll hold the bill for now. Um, yeah, let's hold the bill for now. Uh, we may come back to it. Let's see if we can solve some of these other problems.