Twilight Zoning in Bellingham: Bellingham Rental Licensing

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Bellingham Rental Licensing - A Lesson From Lexington, Kentucky?

As the City Council receives a briefing on rental housing licensing from Mark Gardner, its Legislative Policy Analyst, at the 7 December 09 City Council meeting, it may wish to take into account information from the City of Lexington, KY. which is confronted with many of the same issues on rental housing. You can read the article on the City of Lexington website in its entirety by clicking here, however, I will provide my readers with some salient quotes from the article. [These findings confirm the importance of the questions in my blog entry of 4 June 2008 entitled We Do Not Know, But Do We Want To Know?. Click here to read that entry.] From the City of Lexington:

“Recent inspections of housing in the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Kentucky by city fire inspectors revealed an alarming number of life safety fire code violations, Mayor Jim Newberry said today.”

“Inspections revealed five times the incidence of serious life safety issues as are normally found in comparable inspections of apartments or businesses. Serious life safety issues included no smoke detectors or inoperable smoke detectors in bedrooms, people sleeping in attics with no outside exit and hasp locks on the outside of bedroom doors.”

“…50 percent of the properties inspected had serious violations.”

Lamentably, we do not know a lot about our rental housing stock. Given it comprises more than 50% of single family rentals in Bellingham, we are very likely running a great risk with the lives and safety of renters. The news from Lexington is disconcerting, to say the least, and demonstrates that the possibilities are high that uninspected rental housing is also dangerous in Bellingham.

I have urged the City Council members to consider this health and safety issue as they decide the manner in which it proceeds with the issue of rental housing licensing. I urge you, my readers, to write to the City Council at Citycouncil@cob.org ,with a copy to Mayor Pike at mayorsoffice@cob.org More importantly, you can speak to the council directly for 3 minutes during the public comment period at the start of the City Council meeting on 7 December and tell them that you support landlord licensing.

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The Rationale for Rental Licensing

There is the definitive experience of cities that have already adopted rental licensing and inspections in the face of exactly the same opposition as we saw in Bellingham over the last decade. Ultimately, each of these cities was proven correct in its resolve to move ahead to protect the safety and health of the renters. We already know that the city of Pasco, WA found that 15% of the units inspected under their program had serious life/safety issues. 10% had mold problems. A full 85% had problems of varying degrees. The city of Gresham, OR performed over 1600 inspections in 2009 and issued, as a result, over 4,000 citations. Lexington, KY performed inspections of units near the University of Kentucky and found that 50% had life/safety issues. Sacramento, CA began an inspection program during which one third of the units inspected had serious safety and health issues. The question why does anyone believe that the condition of rental housing here in Bellingham does not mirror that which is found in cities that have the statistics to show that time and time again the condition of rentals in our cities is problematic? All we have had to date from those who oppose licensing are broad statements by the landlords and their paladins that are completely and utterly unsubstantiated. The Zonemaven has searched in vain for the horror stories that these opponents of licensing and inspections have predicted. On the other hand, The Zonemaven did find over 100 cities that have licensing AND inspections without the catastrophic effect for the rental markets that the landlords would have you believe. (See this blog's sidebar at bottom left for list)

One Reason Illegal Rooming Houses Do Not Work

The limit for unrelated persons at a single family home rental is three residents. Leases are signed by three people who then invite additional renters to join them to lower per capita rental rates. The perverse effect is that rental rates tend to rise under these circumstances making it difficult for single families to rent single family homes. Some local rental agencies facilitate this practice.

"To say that a family is so equivalent to a ragtag collection of college roommates as to require identical treatment in zoning decisions defies the reality of the place of the family in American society, despite any changes that institution has undergone in recent years. Only the most cynical among us would say that the American family has devolved to the point of no greater importance or consideration in governmental decision making than a group of college roommates." (Stegeman v. City of Ann Arbor)

That being said, accommodation ought to be made for protected classes, especially non-traditional unions and group houses for the disabled. These classes are laid out in federal and Washington State law.