Twilight Zoning in Bellingham: WWU Students Recount Dangerous Rental Conditions To The City Council

Thursday, March 3, 2011

WWU Students Recount Dangerous Rental Conditions To The City Council

Four WWU students described dangerous rental conditions before the Bellingham City Council on February 28th. During the public comment period, they told Council members about mold, water leaks, sagging floors, collapsing ceilings, inoperable heating systems and inadequate safety exits. You can review the video of the Council meeting by clicking here. Student comments begin at 8 minutes into the video.

Nicole Hicks stated that she became involved as she thought it was the right thing to do when she found out that there was no rental licensing and inspection in this city. While salons and restaurants where one spends relatively little time are licensed, she said, rentals in which one spends much more time are not inspected by the city. She then described her present apartment the entrance to which is a fire escape on an alley. The only other egress is a ladder that leads to a skylight (and then another ladder to the roof) and a window that opens inward but only with a 6 inch gap. Nicole also described an encounter with a prospective landlord who, when challenged about the existence of a 5th bedroom in a house advertised as a 5 bedroom, said that he would create the 5th bedroom in the living room by installing a panel.

Wesley Dyer, a senior and the leader of the Viking Community Builders club, described problems with mold in the units he has rented. [Mold can be very dangerous to those with allergies.] He went on to tell of a friend whose unit was infiltrated by water leaking from above, a ceiling that had partially collapsed and flooring under a tub above that was about to fall through to his floor.

Christopher Brown told of a "landlord" who admitted that no repairs had been done in his rental for 18 years. There was mold, trash from a previous tenant, broken heaters and cracked windows. The "landlord's" excuse was that the organization that owned the rental was low on money and could not effect the repairs.

Andrea Lavelle spoke about her rental unit that had slugs and mold when she moved in. When she complained, she was given a can of bug spray and some bleach. [Note: Bleach kills only certain molds on particular (hard) surfaces. It is not a universal means for mold abatement. OSHA and EPA have revised their guidelines to reflect this remediation problem. Click here and here for more information.] Conditions in her rental became so intolerable (there was a large hole in the side of the building where the wood siding and exposed insulation had rotted) that she complained to the city. The inspector declared the building structurally unsound and thus inhabitable. She was eventually able to break the lease based on the inspector's report.

These students also spoke more generally about rental conditions and the lack of knowledge among their peers. They spoke of not having sufficient expertise to judge the worthiness of a rental before moving in. They spoke of the need for expert evaluation of rentals within the context of a rental licensing and inspection program. They referred to the proposal that was made by the Planning Committee of the City Council on March 24th as being a tentative first step but inadequate to the task at hand, complete rental safety. (Click here to see Councilman Weiss's proposal adopted by the committee.) They specifically spoke to the inadequacies of self-certification, complaint-based systems and licensing/inspection-lite, i.e., going after bad apples only.

Two weeks earlier at the City Council meeting, WWU student Chris Chatburn told the City Council during the comment period "The problem that I am talking about is, of course, sub-standard rental housing in our Bellingham community. As the coordinator of the Associated Students Legal Information Center, I’ve heard hundreds of horror stories from renters detailing significant and serious problems with their homes. An incredibly high percentage of Western students are renters in the community and I have yet to meet one of them that hasn’t run into some problem renting in our community. I have myself been a victim of sub-standard rental housing. We must act now to implement rental licensing with inspections in our city." (Click here to read Chris's entire statement.)

Thanks to these committed and articulate students, the City Council has yet another window onto the realities of the rental market in Bellingham.

No comments:

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.