LEGISLATIVE
ADVOCACY

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Virginia’s 2025 General Assembly session is Wednesday, January 8 to Saturday, February 22. CLICK HERE to find your current legislators and scroll to learn more about VPLC’s legislative advocacy agenda and ways to get involved.

LEARN ABOUT THE ISSUES

VPLC’s 2025 Legislative Agenda

  • Protect Tenants from Eviction:
    - Increase funding for eviction prevention and tenant legal support
    - Extend the "pay or quit" notice for late rent to 14 days

  • Improve Tenant Choices:
    - Prohibit housing discrimination based on expunged eviction records
    - Require landlords to accept all forms of rental payments

  • Public Housing Protections
    - Simplify eviction appeals for public housing tenants
    - Ban extra fees for repairs in public housing

  • Manufactured Home Ownership:
    - Mandate clear fee disclosures and floodplain status for manufactured home parks

  • Fair Access to Home Ownership:
    - Fund first-time homebuyers in Community Land Trusts

  • Access to Healthcare:
    - Expand health coverage to all kids and ensure seamless insurance for children from birth to age six
    - Simplify access to prenatal care and reduce barriers to healthcare, including cancer treatment under Emergency Medicaid

  • Food Security:
    - Guarantee free school meals for all children
    - Increase minimum SNAP benefits for seniors

  • Economic Stability:
    - Expand child-focused tax credits and improve services for non-English-speaking families
    - Ensure families can appeal unfair decisions in public benefit cases

  • Protecting Families:
    - Streamline protective orders for domestic violence survivors and restrict abusers' use of cell phones for stalking
    - Modernize divorce laws to reduce delay in cruelty cases

  • Keeping Families Together:
    - Provide legal support to families involved with child protective services to reduce family separation and need for foster care

  • Empowering Youth in Foster Care:
    - Ensure youth are informed of their rights while in care

  • Strengthening Unemployment Insurance:
    - Increase weekly benefits and allow part-time workers to keep more of their earnings
    - Provide additional support for caregivers and their families

  • Ensuring Utility Fairness:
    - Expand access to energy assistance programs like LIHEAP for low-income households

  • Creating a Fair Marketplace:
    - Stop evasions of Virginia's 2020 Fairness in Lending Act
    - Require transparency of mandatory fees

  • Safeguarding Family Finances:
    - Protect wages and bank accounts from unreasonable debt collectors to ensure basic living needs are met
    - Simplify the return of unclaimed property to families without unnecessary delays

To view and download the above information as a PDF, CLICK HERE.

ACTION CENTER

VPLC Newsletters and Events:

Current Action Alerts:

VPLC Issues in the News:

Legislation Alerts:

Coming soon!

HOW TO FOLLOW THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION

Finding Legislation:

You can find legislation at Virginia’s Legislative Information System’s (LIS) database. You can search this legislation by entering the bill number (e.g., 5051) or by searching a keyword (e.g., eviction). Once you find the legislation, you will find the bill’s sponsor(s) and a summary of the bill’s language. You will also find which committee the bill has been referred to (e.g., referred to Committee on General Laws and Technology). You can track the progress of each bill as it moves through the legislative process.

CLICK HERE to access the 2025 LIS database now.

Finding a Committee:

Once you find where legislation has been referred, you can find when that committee is meeting on the Session Meeting List. Once you know when your committee is convening, be prepared to stream the meeting at the “Virginia Senate Live Stream Video” page or the “Virginia House of Delegates Video Streaming” page. Once the time of your committee is scheduled to start, it will be viewable under the heading entitled “upcoming events.” To stream the event, click “view event.”

CLICK HERE to access the Senate streaming page.

CLICK HERE to access the House streaming page.

STAY UPDATED ON LEGISLATIVE ADVOCACY DURING SESSION

CLICK HERE to join VPLC’s email list and receive weekly updates throughout session, invitations to legislative advocacy trainings, and more.

VPLC’S ADVOCATES

CLICK HERE to view the VPLC 2025 Legislative Advocates list.