Twilight Zoning in Bellingham: Community Forum on Recent Riot, Parties and Rental Safety

Friday, October 18, 2013

Community Forum on Recent Riot, Parties and Rental Safety

The Sehome Neighborhood is hosting a community forum on Monday, 21 October at 6:30 pm (WECU Education Center) to discuss the recent riot, skills for keeping parties safe and greater accountability for health and safety in rentals. See the announcement here.

You also may wish to read my article in NWCitizen on the recent riot and the implications with respect to the proposal to create a private dormitory for nearly 600 students in the Puget Neighborhood, called University Ridge. Click here to read that article.

1 comment:

Abe Jacobson said...: I believe that in the state of California, landlords are held responsible for the actions of their tenants and for damages caused by tenants to other properties. Bellingham currently is completely passive and hands-off about landlord responsibilities for tenant behavior.

I have spoken in the past with two City council members about the related problem of trash accumulation and littered properties, urging Council to impose landlord responsibilities and liabilities by ordinance. It is very easy to spot the rental buildings by the amount of trash and litter scattered around them. Both of the Council members objected to the idea of the city imposing a responsibility on the landlords to keep their places, and road frontages, clean and picked up. Both Council members said that the responsibility must reside with the actual tenant who, at 3 in the morning, drops a sixpack of empties on the lawn outside his apartment; the landlord is blameless. Good luck in catching that in real time!

I think than in view of the pseudo-libertarian mindset such as I encountered in these two Council members, it is going to be very tough to get much progress on other behavioral problems emanating from student housing.

Abe Jacobson; October 20, 2013 at 6:00 PM

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.