What Landlords Need to Know about Rental Registration

[Note: The following was published in NWCitizen on 21 Jul 2014 by Theo Bickel, a recent Political Science graduate of Western Washington University.  It is reproduced here with his permission.Theo has been working with  members of the student body and the student government to ensure that Bellingham landlords offer safe rental housing and that the city provide inspections of all rentals.]

A Robust Inspection of This Burned Rental Would Have Saved This Landlord Time and Money 

When discussing rental code enforcement, you may think it's a dispute between tenants and landlords, or a new draconian tax targeting landlords. This is not true. Washington law has already established a landlord’s legal responsibilities and the minimum health and safety standards of rental properties. The city of Bellingham is discussing the proactive enforcement of existing laws. Most landlords in this town abide by the laws and work hard to keep their properties in the best condition they can. However, in a town with 13,000 rental properties and around 40,000 tenants, many rental properties contain serious safety code violations and put the lives of tenants, neighbors, and our entire community at risk.

Since rental properties are an essential part of our community, their safety is the city's top priority. The city  is discussing proactive code enforcement by requiring rental properties to be registered with the city after a “self-declaration of compliance with a published checklist of minimum standards.” This lays out a checklist of standards that all properties must comply with to make sure there are no unsafe conditions “that endanger or impair or could endanger or impair the health or safety of a tenant.” If a rental property is found to be in violation of these conditions the city will require the landlord bring the property back up to safe standards with a “certificate of inspection” confirming repairs have been done. This program would be funded by a baseline fee to all landlords – similar to a business license. The city would apply fines and civil infractions for violations of health and safety laws to keep housing up to safe levels.

Rental registration would be a city service providing new resources and benefits to landlords. Here are the advantages to landlords in Rental Registration and Code Enforcement.

1. Levels the Playing Field – Currently, landlords who maintain their properties to safety standards compete against those who do not maintain their properties, allowing them to decay to unsafe levels. The registration system is structured to have a minimal impact on landlords who pass inspections and do not have a history of code violations. Fines escalate on landlords who have repeated safety violations in their rental properties. Therefore, this program will lead to a more fair market.

2. Creates Certainty in Rental Market – Registering all rental properties and bringing unsafe housing up to code will lead to greater market confidence, sustainable business practices and greater future investment in the rental market.

3. Enhances Communication between the City and Landlords – Understanding one’s rights and responsibilities may be difficult for new landlords. This program will make city resources and support more accessible. Some examples are:

 - Listing of landlord rights and responsibilities,
 - Standards for rental property health and safety,
 - Identification of unsafe conditions,
 - Assistance of licensed inspectors with professional knowledge about health and safety standards in buildings,
 - Coordinated access to community development non-profits and HUD programs to help low-income landlords in need of assistance.

4. Creates Advertising – A complete on-line list of rental properties with valid registration will be available to tenants. Not only will this site be easy to navigate, but it will also provide advertising to interested customers. After registered properties are certified, the non-registered properties will be avoided by tenants.

5. Improves Safety – Greater maintenance in rental properties will decrease rental fires and create safer communities that benefit everyone in Bellingham. Through registration, the city will be able to contact landlords during emergencies.

6. Increases Property Values – Rental housing will be improved by the enforcement of rental property health and safety standards. Neighborhoods with substandard housing will see new investments and a significant reduction in blight, leading to healthier and more valuable communities.

The Rental Registration program being discussed in the city of Bellingham is based upon data from successful implementation of proactive code enforcement policies in cities across America. These advantages are real, and they are tangible. Landlords, tenants, and all citizens in the city of Bellingham will benefit from the registration of rental properties and the proactive enforcement of health and safety standards. When the worst players of the rental market take advantage of their tenants, ignore their responsibilities, and put people in danger, this impacts community members and landlords who fulfill their duties. Not only is this unfair but it makes it harder to run an honest business. By having a universal registration system and a baseline of safety standards, this program can help bring landlords and city staff together to improve housing in Bellingham.

Support Rental Registration in Bellingham. Write to the mayor (klinville@cob.org) and to the city council (ccmail@cob.org)

Sources (Each item is a hyperlink):

Bellingham (Washington). City of Bellingham 2013 – 2017Consolidated Plan. Community Development [2012].  

Bellingham (Washington). City Council Agenda Bill 20382: Abriefing on a draft ordinance to establish a rental registration program. PlanningCommittee. [4/23/2014].  

Change Lab Solutions. A Guide to Proactive Rental InspectionPrograms. 2014. 

Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic. AnAnalysis of Rental Property Registration in Austin [Texas]. July 2013. 

North Carolina Medical Journal. Using Housing CodeEnforcement to Improve Healthy Homes. 2012.

Rental Safety and Health Founders at City Council Meeting

On Monday evening the city council decided to move forward with the most lax and ineffective version of a rental licensing ordinance.  On 23 June, the council's Planning Committee had provided three versions of a rental health and safety ordinance to the Committee of the Whole for consideration at the 7 Jul council session.  You can view a summary chart of those options here.

Unfortunately, the Committee of the Whole chose Option 1, the one proffered by Council Member Murphy.   You can review this watered-down version of an ordinance in its entirety at the council's webpage here - Draft Ordinance 6-23-14 Registration Only.  The other two versions can be seen also at the same page here.  Even these two are not gems but at least they provide for inspections.

I provided comments on this measure during the public comment period at the beginning of the city council meeting.  You can view a video of my comments here at video counter number 11:50.

The problems one encounters with the selected version of this ordinance is that there is not one shred of a requirement for inspections.  All is complaint based, just as we have had for the past decades, the process that does not work.  Below is what Tim Johnson at the Cascadia Weekly had to say about the council's actions on rental health and safety.   You can read the entire Gristle column, Call of the Mild, here where Tim has hit the nail on the head.

"Council... appears to have lost their way on a registration program for rental units in the city, appearing to jettison every beneficial part of the original proposal in favor of—basically—a telephone directory of landlords tacked on to the bare bones of a complaint-driven system. As several commenters at their meeting noted, there is already a directory of landlords, and there is already a procedure that allows tenants to complain of their shabby tenements. Thus, after more than two decades of work on this issue, Council appears on the threshold of glossing gossamer, cementing in place a “feel good” system already deemed inadequate.

Property managers and brokers, of course, joyously love it, as it compels them to do nothing. It does nothing to alter the power imbalance between the owners and sellers of private property and the 54 percent of city residents who rent from them. As commenters noted, tenants who complain get evicted and they get their references shredded.

The centerpiece of a responsible rental licensing program are audits and inspections that yield data that informs policy about the city’s rental housing stock. Even modest inspections put landlords on notice that they can no longer rely solely on the silence of their tenants on issues of public health and safety. Over the past three years six fires have displaced nearly 20 renters in Bellingham. None of these properties had been reported to the city under the current complaint-based system since most of the tenants were unaware there was a problem and untrained to recognize one.

Council’s malaise on these issues, we’ll argue, is that—with notable exceptions—no member is pushing particularly hard in one direction, and there is no member at all pushing back hard the other way to yield dimension and stakes, even urgency, to their discussions. The public does arrive to scold and beat them, but generally only when they’re already on the precipice, having committed third and final to a mediocre plan. 

The council has voted to have a hearing on this questionable measure sometime in September as it was recognized that the council docket was pretty full in August.  I would suggest further that the council wait until at least October, when one large stakeholder group, the WWU student body, is back in town.  More importantly, the tenants must come forward and call out the council on this risible and ineffective choice, essentially a confirmation of the status quo.