Rent-escrow supporters say just such tenants spelled ruin for Lucy Panian, a Waltham property owner whose family was forced to sell its jewelry business after a lengthy — and costly — eviction fight. According to " The Road Home, " Panian’s tenants stopped paying rent a mere three months after they moved into her downstairs apartment. They soon reported one code violation after another. " For two and a half years, " the Schlomings charged, " they stayed in Lucy’s apartment claiming it was defective and paying almost no rent. " By the time she’d evicted them, her family had lost close to $4000 in unpaid rent.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? But records filed in Middlesex Superior Court paint a different picture. Documents show that Panian’s tenants did not withhold rent until one year after they had moved in, and that Waltham District Court judge Gregory Flynn ordered the tenants to pay only $533 of their $800 monthly rent because of a lead-paint problem. By the end of the 30-month ordeal, the tenants had paid almost $17,000 in rent — well over half the $24,000 that Panian would have collected if there had been no dispute.

SPOA president Lenore Schloming downplays these discrepancies, though she admits she has never seen the Panian documents. " I know from talking to the landlord that this is what happened, " she says. Documentation " doesn’t mean much, " she adds. " There are inmates on death row who turn out to be innocent, yet court records show they are guilty. " She suggests that details of the case don’t matter as much as the outcome: " So what if there are inaccuracies? [Panian] went bankrupt because her tenants weren’t paying rent. That’s the bottom line. "

Yet the discrepancies raise doubts about SPOA’s credibility. And Margaret Monsell of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute — the housing-advocacy group that researched the Panian records — speaks for many SPOA critics when she says the differences cut to " the heart of the erroneous claim that our current legal system allows tenants to withhold rent for years at a time and offers landlords no protection or recourse. " (Actually, judges can already order tenants to escrow their rent if the landlord requests a hearing.) Rather than a tenant-from-hell nightmare, the Panian story comes across as a longer-than-normal dispute with legitimate claims on both sides. Adds Monsell, " If this is their best case and the facts don’t support their contentions, we have to question how prevalent a problem this really is. "

Rent-escrow supporters, however, insist that vacant and abandoned units are commonplace throughout the state. And they insist that these apartments are languishing because property owners have gotten burned by unfair landlord-tenant laws. " We know this from the landlords, " maintains Stephen Ryan, the general counsel at the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR). He says that one anecdote after another bears out the problem of the " phantom apartment. " " These units are available for rent, " Ryan adds, " but owners refuse to rent them. They don’t want to go through the hassle of renting. "

JoAnn Giessler, who heads the Worcester Property Owners Association (WPOA), agrees. " The housing shortage is really fabricated, " she says. " You have enough units. Landlords just aren’t renting them. "

Aside from anecdotes, though, supporters don’t have the data that would lend credence to their position. GBREB director Shanahan concedes that there are no " statistics to back this up as a real problem, " though he says he " personally knows " people who keep rental units vacant. The only group that has tried to offer numbers is the WPOA, which estimates that 1000 units have been left empty in the city of Worcester. Another 5000, it says, sit idle throughout Worcester County. These figures stem from a casual survey that WPOA members conducted with landlords during a homeowners’ trade show several years ago, says Sandra Katz, an active WPOA member. " It was an informal survey, " she acknowledges. When asked why WPOA has not followed up with a scientific study, Katz replies, " We’re volunteers. We don’t have the manpower to do that. "

The lack of real data has left housing advocates flummoxed. As Purcell, the GBLS attorney, says: " Why should we pass this legislation now when supporters have offered no empirical evidence? " Indeed, statistics that do exist seem to contradict the landlords’ contentions. According to the 2000 Census, Massachusetts has the lowest rental-vacancy rate in the country, at 3.5 percent. Even states with comparable housing crises, such as California and New York, have higher rates — 3.7 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively. And fewer boarded-up buildings dot the landscape today. In Boston, where the Department of Neighborhood Development keeps an annual list of abandoned residential properties, the number has dropped from 1049 in 1997 to 376 in 2000.

The notion that countless landlords would turn their backs on this seller’s market strikes housing advocates as laughable. " In this universe, it’s a farce to say landlords are afraid to rent, " says Stephen Meachum, who heads the Jamaica Plain–based tenants’ group City Life/Vida Urbana. " It’s a farce to say this market warrants rent escrowing. "

Besides, says Marc Draisen, who heads the Boston-based Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, requiring rent escrow has " absolutely nothing " to do with generating affordable housing. " Let’s be clear, " he says. " What will really happen is not more housing, but more tenant evictions. " More evictions would mean more turnover of rental units. More turnover would mean higher rents. " It’s hogwash to raise the affordable-housing issue, " he says.

Even Paul Sullivan, the political editor of the Lowell Sun, which has editorialized in favor of rent-escrow legislation, says the housing-crunch argument is " not particularly effective. " The Sun, he says, defends the practice instead as " a protection for landlords against professional deadbeat tenants. " He concludes, " Housing advocates are right when they say [mandatory rent escrow] won’t solve the housing problem. It’s a marginal link. "

IT MAY be a marginal link, but it’s meant a triumphant chain of events for the rent-escrow cause. Whereas previous rent-escrow bills languished in committee, the latest one sailed onto the House floor by July 2 — just six months into the 2001-’02 legislative session.

State Representative Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge), a bill opponent who serves on the Joint Committee on Housing and Urban Development, had anticipated this and advised housing advocates to consider a proposal they could live with. In June, after meeting with activists and the real-estate board, the committee drafted a bill that would have required a judge to rule on rent escrow once an eviction case was postponed. The proposal, Wolf says, addressed landlords’ complaints about tenants’ getting a free ride while a dispute drags on. Yet it also gave tenants the chance to be heard by a judge before having to pay. She adds, " We thought we had an acceptable compromise. "

But property owners were " very disturbed " by the compromise — and made it clear to legislators. Katz recalls, " We told them we didn’t like it — just throw it out. " Maybe this explains what happened to the committee’s proposal on July 2. House minority leader Francis Marini (R-Hanson) offered an amendment, which passed with Speaker Thomas Finneran’s approval, mandating that tenants deposit rent before seeing the judge. If advocates are upset with the House bill, they’re not much happier about the proposed Senate version. It would allow tenants to request a court hearing before setting aside rent, which could reduce or eliminate the escrow requirement. Tenants who didn’t ask, though, would have to escrow the amount the landlord demanded. Mass Law Reform’s Monsell calls the proposed Senate provision " an improvement " yet adds: " Very few tenants have lawyers or any knowledge about the court process. So we still have concerns about the fairness of a system that, in most cases, will ask no questions about the landlord’s claims. "

Things could have turned out much worse. Senator Panagiotakos has been pushing for changes that would have made the Senate version require tenants not simply to escrow rent, but also to get a report verifying code violations. In reality, the Senate rarely takes a more conservative stance than the House on social issues. But the fact that the Senate Ways and Means Committee has drafted a rent-escrow provision suggests that Senate president Thomas Birmingham (D-Chelsea) supports the concept, despite his progressive housing record. Some State House insiders suspect he helped deliver a bill Panagiotakos could support, though not one that calls for inspection reports, in exchange for backing his own gubernatorial bid. " He is the big senator from Lowell, an area Birmingham would do well to win, " one insider surmises. Panagiotakos, however, dismisses talk of a political deal: " I didn’t know I had that much pull. " Meanwhile, Birmingham’s spokesperson, Alison Franklin, says: " The Senate proposal with regard to escrow is a matter of policy, and not politics. The Senate president believes it is important to balance the legitimate interests of good tenants and good landlords. The version reported by the Senate Ways and Means Committee does that. "

No matter what happens to Panagiotakos’s bill, some form of rent-escrow legislation now seems inevitable. After all, the real-estate lobby — a well-financed, well-organized group — appears to have answered the call for multifaceted solutions to the statewide housing squeeze. As GBREB’s Shanahan readily admits, " There’s no question the momentum has something to do with the housing shortage. "

But if their " solution " carries the day, rent-escrow supporters will have managed to shift the focus of the affordable-housing debate from those who don’t have homes to those who do.

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com