RELATING TO EVICTION MEDIATION.

Extended the notice period for termination of rental agreements from five business days to ten calendar days for nonpayment cases.

Requires landlords to provide specific tenant contact information in the ten-calendar-day notice, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Mandates that landlords provide copies of the notice to state-funded mediation centers to facilitate scheduling mediation sessions.

Establishes a 20-day waiting period before filing eviction if mediation is scheduled, regardless of whether the mediation session occurs within the initial ten-day period.

Appropriates funds from general revenues for fiscal years 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 to support the judiciary's mediation services.

Set the effective date for the pilot program to February 5, 2026, with repeal scheduled for February 4, 2027, and a separate effective date of July 1, 2050 for the overall act.

Allows landlords to request payment of attorneys' fees if tenants default on mediated agreements or fail to attend scheduled mediation.

Extended the notice period for termination of rental agreements from five business days to ten calendar days, giving tenants more time to address rent payment issues.

Mandates that landlords and tenants engage in early mediation and delay filing eviction actions if a tenant schedules mediation within the notice period.

Requires landlords to provide specific information in the ten-calendar-day notice, including contact details, rent amount due, and notice that the document is being sent to a state-funded mediation center.

Appropriates funds to the judiciary to contract for mediation services and operate the pre-litigation mediation pilot program.

Establishes a sunset provision where the pilot program ends on February 4, 2028, with a requirement to submit a report to the legislature before then.

Allows landlords to file for summary possession after 20 calendar days if mediation is scheduled, but only after the tenant fails to attend or cancel the mediation.

Includes provisions for remote mediation options and allows courts to cure unintentional defects in the notice without dismissing eviction actions.

The pilot program duration was changed from two years to one year, with the pilot now ending on February 4, 2026 instead of February 2027.

A new provision ensures that the extended ten-calendar-day notice period for rental termination becomes permanent after the pilot ends, rather than reverting to the original five-business-day requirement.

Funding appropriation was adjusted to cover fiscal years 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 instead of 2025-2026 and 2027-2028 to match the shortened pilot timeline.

The bill text was reformatted from a Senate committee draft to a House draft version, with some formatting inconsistencies and placeholder text that need to be cleaned up before final passage.

Added CD1 metadata headers including bill number, author information, timestamps, and document identifiers.

Removed draft document headers and page markers from the original SB825 version.

Converted text formatting from draft markup style to clean legislative text format.