Twilight Zoning in Bellingham: Samish Neighborhood Supports Rental Registration and Inspection

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Samish Neighborhood Supports Rental Registration and Inspection

The Samish Neighborhood delivered a letter to the city council earlier this week that announced the neighborhood's support for legislation to register and inspect rental housing. The text of the letter follows below. The city council is tentatively set to discuss rental health and safety on July 7th.

Samish Neighborhood Association

P.O. Box 1551

Bellingham, WA 98227

RE: Rental Housing Regulation

June 16, 2014

To Bellingham City Council Members,

The Samish Neighborhood Association Board would like to express its support of the City of Bellingham for considering proposals to reform the regulation of rental units to ensure the health and safety of renters.

First is the need for regulating rental housing, which should be classified as a business, through licensing or registration with concomitant inspection of units. Rental businesses should be controlled in a way that protects the tenants while maintaining the character and integrity of all neighborhoods. Licensing or registering these businesses would ensure that the city has an effective enforcement tool and that minimum standards for safety and health are met.

Second, we strongly recommend changing BMC Title 20 to alter code violations to make them civil infractions instead of criminal misdemeanors. Many nuisance issues are not criminal problems. We believe the city will save significant time and resources addressing them at the civil level allowing for more rigorous and uniform enforcement.

As the Board of the Samish Neighborhood Association, we encourage you to move quickly on these important issues addressing residential rentals to promote the welfare of tenants in all neighborhoods throughout the city.

Sincerely,

Don Hale

President

You can help support the tens of thousands of tenants in Bellingham by writing to the mayor (klinville@cob.org) and to the city council at (ccmail@cob.org). Tell them that the rental industry is a business and, as such, should be regulated for health and safety issues just as restaurants and hotels. That means registration and periodic inspections.

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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.