Twilight Zoning in Bellingham

A Tale of Two Space Heaters

2012-01-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

Two recent area fires involved the improper use of space heaters. One incident took place on January 19th in Bellingham on Cedarwood Rd . The owner of a vacant house, who also owns several other small homes in Bellingham, attempted to keep an unheated crawl space warm enough to avoid frozen water pipes by putting a space heater underneath the home. In a similar fire in Ferndale, renters were burned out of their house after they placed a space heater under the home, also in an attempt to keep water pipes from freezing. You can read the Herald account of the fires by clicking here. The Fire Chief's press release on the Bellingham fire can be read here and the investigative report from the Fire Marshal here.

The commonality of these two fires is, of course, the improper use of the space heaters. Here we have an instance in which both a landlord and a renter were ignorant of safety issues. Critics of inspection of rentals for safety and health reasons often state that landlords have sufficient knowledge to care for their units and that renters can depend upon either themselves or their landlords to ensure rentals are safe. These two stories belie such contentions.

Note the condition of this vacant property on Cedarwood to begin with. It is in very poor condition. Homes like these attract vagrants and vermin while their appearance depresses property values in the neighborhood. Moreover such dilapidated structures are a fire danger to adjacent homes, especially in this case in that the houses in this area tend to have been built close together. In this particular instance, two homes share a single lot with little space separating them.

Our city council last year was considering an ordinance that, had it been approved, would have had as its theme going after the "bad apples" so as not to "punish" all the good landlords. Exactly how these "bad apples" were to be identified was not so apparent. The owner of this vacant home has several other properties in Bellingham, although the one on Cedarwood happened to be empty. There is no indication that he is a "bad apple", yet clearly he operated unaware of basic safety. He may be, for all intents and purposes, a good landlord notwithstanding the fact that he lacks knowledge, an ignorance that could be a threat to those living in the other three properties he owns.

The fact is that , although the city council has refused to accept it, there is no way to find all the "bad apples" absent an inspection program that looks at all rentals. Any reliance on a renter complaint-based program is doomed to failure for that is the present state of affairs. The health department does not go after the "bad apple" restaurants nor do they rely solely on complaints or self-inspections. It looks at all restaurants and all restaurants pay into the system to finance these inspections. This is basic common sense that the public recognizes and supports. Nobody purposely takes his family to a filthy restaurant nor do we expect diners to check out the kitchen with their own punch list. We count on our local authorities to ensure that these establishments are safe and pose no health problem. Why should we expect less of landlords who offer their properties to the public for money?

Yet Another Rental House Fire in Bellingham

2012-01-19T10:28:00.001-08:00

Blog entry deleted. See posting of 28 Jan 2012: A Tale of Two Space Heaters.

Western Front Editorial Again Calls for Rental Inspections

2012-01-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

For the second time in two years the Western Front's editorial board has affirmed its support for an ordinance that would ensure the health and safety of renters in Bellingham. In a 6 January editorial, that also recommended that students obtain renters' insurance, the board stated, 'This editorial board supports rental licensing that would protect the students and families that inhabit Bellingham’s 18,000 rental properties." [You can read the board's complete editorial by clicking here. The Western Front's earlier, 2010 editorial on the subject can be found here.]

Students have good reason to be concerned. Here is the tally of near fire disasters in the last twelve months:

- A fire on Grant Street in the York Neighborhood burns. Three WWU students nearly perish. All four renters displaced. Click here to read more.

- A fire at the Daylight Building on State Street leads the fire marshal to discover that an apartment in the building has no viable fire exit for several of the rooms. Two students displaced. Click here to read more.

- A fire on Maple Street nearly kills three of the five renters, all of whom are WWU students. They lose everything in the fire. Click here to read more.

- A fire on 24th Street nearly kills an entire family in a rental home. Two students in an adjacent part of the duplex are displaced due to fire damage. Fire marshal's report pending. Read the Western Front article on the student victims here.

The tally? Thirteen students directly affected by serious fires, several of which nearly cost lives. All of these fires were electrical in origin as was another fire on Ellis Street that apparently did not involve WWU students. All of these blazes were largely preventable, especially had the city an inspection program in place.

These fires are not the only dangers facing students and other renters in Bellingham. Serious problems with mold, structural defects, blocked exits (24th Street fire!), carbon monoxide leaks, gas leaks, faulty heating systems, faulty plumbing, vermin, and all types of filth abound. I remind my readers of the survey done by a WWU student group last year that revealed the remarkable extent of the problems with conditions in rentals. (You can review the survey here.) I urge my readers to re-examine this survey and write to our council members (ccmail@cob.org) to ask them to enact an ordinance to license rentals and ensure the health and safety of the renters with regular physical verification of conditions by certified building/home inspectors.

More on the Maple Street Fire

2012-01-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

Late last year a rental home burned on Maple St. (click here to read my original post on the fire) and five young women students from WWU lost all their belongings. Those present in the home also barely escaped with their lives. Two of the five women had been away at the time of the fire. Had it not been for two of the remaining three who heard the first floor smoke alarm, a third woman, who had been sleeping upstairs, might have died since she did not hear the alarm. Her comment to me (in an anonymous post to my blog entry on the fire) was "Not only was there not an extinguisher, I was the girl who didn't wake up. The fire alarm only went off downstairs, not in my room."

Research has shown that some people; the hearing impaired, small children and even teens; do not respond at all or respond very slowly to smoke alarms. Given that the amount of time needed to escape from a burning home is measured in minutes, the obvious conclusions can be drawn. The report on the fire (click here to read the fire marshal's report) supports the fact that one of the residents was not awakened by the alarm.

Other questions regarding the fire and the general condition of the home are yet unanswered. I have yet to speak to the fire marshal, who is now busy preparing a report of investigation on a subsequent fire on New Year's Day. Unfortunately, any further details from the victims of the fire are now unavailable as I have learned that either the landlord or his insurance company has threatened to sue the tenants over the loss of the rental. My one phone conversation with one of the renters was, therefore, limited in nature and revealed nothing regarding either the fire or the general condition of the rental home. My contact with another individual close to the family also has been effectively limited by the threat of legal ramifications on an eventual suit. Unless this incident actually goes to court, we, the people of Bellingham, are unlikely to learn more about the fire. Similarly, insurance investigations on this property and on the same landlord's property on Grant St. that burned earlier in 2011 - click here to read about that- are not public documents. Again the public is denied information that affects the health and safety of all renters in Bellingham.

As for the terrible fire in a rental on 24th Street, which ushered in the New Year for our fire department, the fire marshal's report has yet to be issued. That fire, which seriously injured members of the MacGregor family, also appears to have originated with baseboard heating. This may indicate that there is a more generalized problem regarding electric baseboard heating. (Read a report from the National Fire Protection Association on selected baseboard heating fires by clicking here.) Furthermore, none of the press reports has indicated the presence of operable smoke alarms in that rental. I will have further information on that blaze later this month.

[See below for information on efforts to provide support to the victims of this most recent fire. This information was obtained from the Bellingham Herald article of 8 Jan 2012:

"- Volunteer to collect donations at White's storage unit outside her home, 1029 22nd St. Call 360-305-4419 for more information.

- People can donate money to the MacGregor Family Benefit Account at any Peoples Bank location.

- A local Girl Scouts troop is raising money to buy the family a desktop computer. Email troop41539@gmail.com or visit supportmacgregors.blogspot.com for details."]

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/01/07/2340668/bellingham-rallies-around-family.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

Maple Street Fire - Some Unresolved Questions

2011-12-02T07:53:00.000-08:00

On the 30th of November a house fire at 718 E. Maple Street was essentially totally destroyed by fire. You can read the Bellingham Herald's account of this fire by clicking here. Five young women, WWU students, rented the home that the County Assessor's office records show is owned by David Hansen. Hansen also owns the home at 1404 Grant St. that was destroyed by fire earlier this year. (Click here to read about that incident) There is not yet a positive indication that this second fire was the fault of any one person, however, there remains some question about the fire's origin that must be answered by the investigation to determine if either the renters or the landlord carries responsibility.

Although the Zonemaven spoke with the fire inspector, Jason Napier, about the blaze, it would not be helpful to speculate based on Mr. Napier's initial thoughts. After the investigative report is released, the Zonemaven will comment further.

In the meantime, we might speak again about smoke/fire detectors. These alarms saved the lives of the renters in this case, however, the alarms are, as has been said in this blog before, only a last resort. In other words, the more important issue is the cause of the fire in the first place and the steps the renter, the landlord and the city should take to eliminate the root cause of these fires. Alarms are no substitute for enduring poor conditions in rentals.

We may also have a conversation about the apparent absence of a fire extinguisher in the rental unit. Extinguishers are not required in single family rentals in Bellingham because there is no control over these rentals whatsoever. Therein lies a great problem, the health and safety of all renters in this city. Our new mayor is supportive of treating these rentals as businesses. Businesses that deal with the public, i.e. renters, ought to conform to basic safety and health standards. An ordinance to do so should be a priority in 2012.

Infill Tool Kit Abuse - What Took So Long?

2011-11-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

The Bellingham version of a bail-out is the Type VI rezone process which allows developers to ask for a rezone on their property. Couple this process with the infamous Infill Tool Kit and you have a recipe for disaster in a neighborhood. (Read the InfillTool Kit ordinance by clicking here) You no doubt remember the sham “academy” put together by Tim Stewart, our former Planning Director, to gain enough faux citizen involvement in creating the Tool Kit to claim that it underwent a “public process”. Shortly thereafter, Stewart, having ladled the Infill Tool Kit turd into the zoning punchbowl, skulked off to Mercer Island, leaving the citizens here to drink from the contaminated tureen.

There were those of us who fought the Tool Kit and thought that the city accepted that this device, although approved by the city council, was not to be used in single family zoned neighborhoods. “Yes, yes, three bags full” was the response, “Only for use in urban villages and the city center – multi-family zoned areas.” Unfortunately, one need go no farther than the present Sunnyland Neighborhood opposition to the rezone of the former DOT site to find an early prime example of the attempted misuse of the Tool Kit to provide for the financial well being of a developer at the expense of the desires of the people who actually live there.

So late in 2010 the owners of the 113 acres in the Samish Neighborhood known as Padden Trails filed for a rezone of their property from single family residential to multi-family residential. The land, located east of I-5 and south of Connelly at the very edge of the city limits, is characterized by steep slopes and wetlands. It was zoned in 1969 to accommodate about 246 single family homes, although this zoning to half-acre lots was apparently done by folks who would not know a contour interval on the map, if it them in the face. Be that as it may, since the terrain will not readily allow such use, the developers have sought to rezone the property and have used as justification, in part, the infamous Infill Tool Kit ordinance. In essence, these developers are attempting to make a silk purse from their sow’s ear purchase by asking the city to bail them out and ignoring the desires of the Samish Neighborhood and the realities of the inappropriateness (dare I say quasi-legality) of placing dense zoning in the form 292 single family homes (i.e., Infill Tool Kit types such as cottages and townhomes) plus 200 multi-family units, for instance condominiums.

Furthermore, the process for this rezone is a mess, in and of itself. In a comment to my article on this same subject on the NWCitizen site (click here to read that article and its links to the data) Wendy Harris made these cogent observations:

“This is an extremely poor planning effort. Just try to reconcile the Staff report, the zoning application and the supporting documents, including an Amended SEPA checklist. The final application is for 615 housing units, while the supporting documents are for 492 units. Why was a SEPA determination and Staff report drafted for units that do not correspond to the application?

The City references site plans and building schematics that were submitted in support of the application, but then admits that the site plan and schematics contain inadequate information for a substantive review, and have not been reviewed for feasibility or consistency with City Code.

If an area is too steep and environmentally sensitive to allow much development, as admitted by the City, it should not be rezoned residential multi-family. Note that even after the proposed rezone, this will remain a low density area. Infill is being used here not to increase density, as intended, but to provide for development “flexibility” and clustering (i.e., inappropriate development in critical areas.)

It is clear that the City did not want to say no to a project that the developer intended to develop in the future. Intentions do not vest...; only land use applications vest. The rezone is an attempt to justify development that is discouraged under current land use regulations.”

Given the relatively lower cost of these units, one might reasonably imagine reversion to rentals and the kind of degradation seen already in the Magnolia Hills development where investors swooped in after the initial cohort of owner-occupiers sold their homes (on small lots) and moved out or up. The area nowadays is a rental horror show, full of cars, trucks, boats, RVs and all such similar objects that seem to be prized in this city as lawn ornaments. Given the total lack of parking restrictions, the roads within Magnolia Hills can barely accommodate a single lane of traffic. Need we recreate that within Padden Hills?

All of the above observations are but a few examples regarding not only the inadvisability of this particular Padden Trails rezone but also the distorted planning process and inherent disadvantage of neighborhoods attempting to resist the monied interests during Type VI rezones. The developers can count on money, staff, attorneys, other paladins and their associated mountebanks whose normal paid workday is that of schmoozing city officials and preparing myriad documentation and slick promotional material at which altar the Planning Department appears to worship. The neighborhoods depend on unpaid effort and time with little or no financing except for voluntary contributions from those who already have jobs, families and related obligations. The city aids and abets this obvious imbalance. You should be worried, for this could be a show coming to your neighborhood soon.

The Planning Commission will meet to consider this rezone application on Thursday, December 1st at 7:00pm. Click here for more information.

[Note: For the purposes of disclosure, I am a member of the Board of Directors of the Samish Neighborhood. My comments above are in no way meant to represent the position of the Board of Directors or the members of the Samish Neighborhood Association. ]

Mayor Pike! Stop the Obfuscation on Rental Licensing & Inspection

2011-10-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Mayor Pike,

Twice in the last several weeks you have spoken to the issue of rental licensing during debates with your challenger, Kelli Linville. Both times, to justify your lack of support for the licensing and inspection of rentals, you referred to problems that the city of Puyallup had with its program that you heard from a former employee who is now works for the city of Bellingham. Perhaps you misspoke, but the fact is that Puyallup does not have a rental licensing and inspection program. I checked.

Might I remind you that in the past you have brought up the city of Auburn as an example of licensing that did not work. In that case, you referred to Mr. Jim Tinner who was hired by Bellingham from Auburn. The story at that time was that they had tried licensing but that it did not work for reasons that were never clearly delineated. Moreover, you failed to mention that they have licensing but have never tried inspections for health and safety.

You have also stated that there was some difficulty in Puyallup (or was that Auburn?) and that 90% of the "costs" there went to trying to figure out who owned the houses and that there was not a way to know who owned these rentals (My readers can view the Mayor's response by clicking here and going to 145 on the video counter.) 90%? What does that mean? Is this a percentage of start-up costs? Of total program costs? The figure does not make sense but it does tend to stoke the fear factor, if that is, in fact, the objective.

Mr Mayor - there is an extensive property data base run by Whatcom County that can easily provide the vast majority of the information to identify rentals. One need only compare the address of the owner with the address of the property. If the addresses differ, it is likely a rental in that landlords would not normally have their business mail go to the rental's mail box. Part of any such ordinance can also call for landlords to register with the city by a certain date. A substantive fine for not doing so would ensure compliance. Pasco succeeded. So did Gresham, Oregon. Why do we continue to talk about failure in Auburn (Puyallup?) when this has all been done successfully elsewhere?

[If you need a volunteer to assist in identifying these rentals, I would be happy to help - no charge. The last 15 years of my career were spent, in part, managing the installation of computer systems and supervising the creation and modification of data bases.]

Over a year ago, I wrote to you about the claims you make on this issue. My comments were very specific. Your reply ignored them. My readers can look at my letter and your response by clicking here.

I find it disingenuous that you keep bringing up Auburn (or Puyallup in a forgetful moment) as the poster child for licensing and inspection that failed, when Auburn never tried inspections. (I called them to check. They have licensing only.) You seem to avoid talking about Pasco, WA that has had a successful licensing and inspection program for over a decade. You also avoid mentioning that the cities of Prosser, Tukwila and Seattle have recently passed rental inspection and licensing ordinances.

I think you need to be straight with the electorate and stop fuzzing over your objections to licensing and inspections to ensure the health and safety of our rental population. If your opposition to licensing and inspection is based on facts, let us hear them. That you do not think an ordinance is appropriate, we need to know the reasons. References to mythical programs in other cities will not do. Reliance on FUD* tactics is not in the best interest of the voting public.

Mr. Mayor, if you have some definitive facts and figures that you wish to convey to the citizens of Bellingham in order to support your opposition to licensing, I would be happy to publish that information. You can reach me at zonemaven AT hotmail DOT com.

*FUD - Fear - Uncertainty - Doubt

Bellingham Creates Web Page on Landlord/Tenant Resources

2011-09-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Shortly after the City Council voted on June 20th not to continue down this year's path toward licensing and inspecting rentals, the City of Bellingham added a page to its website that outlines resources for landlords and tenants. You can peruse this web page by clicking here. Warning: Dependence on this site may be hazardous to your health and welfare!

The page provides links to various statutes that cover landlord/tenant relationships and directs tenants to some organizations that assist tenants who may be in conflict with their landlord over issues such as rental unit condition, withholding of security deposits and other legal problems.

Unfortunately, the site is passive. You have to look for it. If you have no computer, you are out of luck. Furthermore, the site does not, nor can it ever provide to the tenant an assurance regarding the safety and health conditions of a rental. Under current circumstances, the tenant is on his or her own.

Therein lies the problem that I have discussed many times on this blog. The tenant is in no position to judge the condition of a rental - nor, for that matter, are most landlords. It is not stupidity. It is ignorance. Regrettably, no amount of information on a web page can provide tenants the wherewithal to ensure that the unit he or she is about to rent is safe and presents no health hazards. For that assurance one needs the eye of a trained and state approved housing inspector or code enforcement officer.

The solution for Bellingham is rental housing health and safety inspections; the key to a decent, habitable and secure rental stock.

Western Front Notes Failure of Rental Licensing to Pass

2011-09-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

Just after the Bellingham City Council voted not to initiate a process to develop a rental licensing and inspection ordinance in the city, the WWU student newspaper, the Western Front, published this brief editorial comment on 30 June.

“Rental revamp would have protected tenants...
On June 20, the Bellingham City Council voted against a motion to require rental licensing and an inspection program for rental properties. These inspections would make sure rental properties were safe to live in.

Councilmember Terry Bornemann said the cost of the inspections would come with a fee, which the rental agencies would pass onto their tenants.

In an environment where 18,000 residents live in rental houses and apartments, there needs to be a way for renters to be protected. The small cost for inspections is minuscule to ensure that unsafe living conditions in Bellingham diminish.

If the main concern of the Bellingham City Council is the cost being passed onto tenants, then they should create a regulation to make sure it won’t happen. Stricter inspections and a zero-tolerance policy could make rental agencies change their practices when dealing with tenants."

The Associated Students (the student governing body) approved a resolution supporting rental licensing and inspections last year. (Click here to read that resolution)The Western Front is also previously on record in support of such legislation. (Click here to read that editorial)

The student body is becoming more aware of the manner in which they are placed at risk by substandard housing. Perhaps they can persuade the City Council of the same during the coming academic year.

Rats! It Is Rats Galore with No Rental Inspections

2011-08-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

John and his wife, Amy, (not their real names)moved into their small York rental home in December 2010. John, an Iraq veteran, works in a local supermarket minutes away from his rental. Shortly after they moved in, Amy gave birth to their son. Nobody told them that the rats were already in the home, a place where their newborn would eat and sleep. They discovered the rats after being in the house for a few months. Rat droppings in the basement. The odor of rat feces as the heating system was turned on. The noise of rats scurrying inside the walls. The threat of Hantavirus or other maladies should they even attempt to clean up the rat droppings.

Repeated contact with the landlord provided no relief. The landlord blamed the tenants, saying that they had brought the rodents with them when they moved. A look at neighboring properties suggests that the rats have been there long before the renters moved in. With an intransigent landlord, the couple had no choice but to move out. Not being able to find affordable housing in town, the couple now lives on the city's outskirts in a trailer home and John has become a commuter.

To add insult to injury, the landlord, who owns about 5 other rentals in Bellingham, demanded (as a condition for the return of the couple's security deposit of nearly $1,000) that they sign a waiver, absolving the landlord of responsibility for the rats. Having no short term recourse, they were forced to sign to get their deposit back.

Let us take a tour of the home:

Rat droppings at the basement level click here, here, here and here.

Rat entry points - click here and here.

Rats' hideout at abutting neighbor's tool shed - click here, here and here.

Lest we overlook them, there are other problems in the home. Take a look.

Unsafe electrical outlets and wiring - click here, here, here and here.

Sewer drain pipe supported only by cloth band. Click here.

Rotted siding. Click here.

And to feed the rats, there are trash heaps such as this one a few doors away. Click here.

This is yet another sad example of the conditions of rental housing in Bellingham. It also points out the problems inherent in a system in which the government has opted out of the business of safety and health, allowing tenants and landlords to sort it out on their own with the obvious downside for the tenant who has little leverage, little spare time and usually less money to spend on a civil court action. Since the council recently defeated even a most minimal effort to license rentals and hold landlords accountable for conditions, it will be a while before our renters will be able to count on safe housing in this city.

Dueling Op-Eds on Rental Licensing

2011-06-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

After a recent work session of the Planning Committee of the Bellingham City Council on the topic of rental licensing and inspections, John Stark published an article on the meeting. You can read the article by clicking here. The article elicited over a hundred comments, most of which were of little value and amounted to little more than mud wrestling. Posting some more serious comments to the article and to the question of rental licensing was Perry Eskridge, the Government Affairs Director for the Whatcom Realtors ®.

As a result of the lengthy comments by Mr. Eskridge and the Zonemaven on Mr. Stark's article, the two of us were invited by the Herald to write op-eds on the subject of rental licensing. These pieces appeared in the Herald on Sunday, 19 June 2011. You can read them by clicking here.

Naturally, it is difficult to present an argument in all its facets in an op-ed of 700 words. To gain a better appreciation of the difference in the various aspects of the topic, it may be useful to read our comments to the Stark article. I have extracted and reprinted them below. It may be a long read but you may find it worthwhile.

Perry: This is an interesting issue. As with many things, the devil is in the details.

People say this will not increase rents. Wrong. The Proposal will require that all rentals be maintained according to the International Property Maintenance Code. For those of you that don't know, housing is usually required to meet the code in effect when the structure was built or, if a substantial remodel, at the time the remodel occurs. This WILL be a wholesale change of the standards to which the landlord will be required to meet resulting in substantially increased costs that, ultimately, must be passed on to the tenants. The average age of housing in Bellingham is well over twenty years old, so you can imaging the code changes that have taken place in that time and the cost that will be necessary to meet this code! If you think those upgrades are going to be free, you are sorely mistaken. If you don't believe me, ask your landlord.

Also, would someone explain to me where the city is going to find ONE inspector qualified to do electrical, plumbing, environmental, and structural inspections for $100,000/year who is also willing to try and conduct 5-10 inspections per day AND be available for court AND be available for follow-up inspections AND be able to drive to the various rentals every day AND take time to write reports? Anyone that thinks that one inspector is going to do all this HAS to be a bureaucrat! So, when the city realizes that $24 isn't going to cut it, what happens then? The fees go up and the rents go up.

This proposal makes tenants second-class citizens. A Tenancy is, legally speaking, an "estate in land." It is distinguished from a Fee Estate in that the tenant does not have all the rights a Fee owner has, but the Tenant does retain many ownership rights. Included in those rights is the right to possession of the home free from unreasonable intrusion by the Fee owner, the right to exclude persons from the home, the ability to benefit from the "quiet enjoyment" of the property, etc. But let's look at some of the hallmarks of this proposal.

First, the government wants to come into your home and inspect for violations. This is something that does NOT happen to a fee owner absent a warrant, subject to due process protections, and the opportunity to oppose the issuance of a warrant to the judge the government has asked to issue the warrant. Now, if you are a tenant, the city is giving itself the right to come into your home to be sure that you are living in a safe manner. Remember, some of the violations that the City is looking for will be fines for which the Tenant is responsible, so the landlord isn't the only one on the hook here when the inspection occurs.

Also, what happens if a city inspector is in your home and finds evidence of criminal activity? Don't think for a moment that such a circumstance will go unnoticed or unpunished. Even better, you aren't notified that you have the ability to oppose the inspection if you wish. Better hide that water pipe, that prescription that isn't yours, make sure your computer is turned off, etc., because anything you say, or do, will be used against you in a court of law! Ever tried to get the government out of your house after you invite/allow them in?

What happens when you oppose? Well, the council thought of that as well. They have inserted a provision that allows the City to go to court and obtain a civil warrant. If you oppose the inspection, the City proposes to take you to court and force you to submit to the inspections. This means that you will take time to appear before the judge and have to provide evidence that your home should not be inspected for violations. Not increased rent, but lawyers are more expensive! And if the landlord has to hire a lawyer, any guess as to who will ultimately pay? Sure, the inspections will be a random percentage, but as with many games of chance, we know the house always wins!

Make no mistake, this is a loser proposition from the word, "Go." Even a council member yesterday confessed that they don't really have a good handle on how big -or small- this problem is. The Mayor and the former Planning Director have stated time and again that they receive, on average, less than two dozen complaints a year. Too bad the council refuses to work with the information they have.

I could go on about how the proposal flies in the face of Washington corporate law, how the city already has an effective process if they would just use it, and how this is a $300,000 solution looking for a problem. If you think the council is concerned about the real impacts of this proposal, just take a look at whether a public hearing is required. The staff report says "No." Zonemaven will scream if I don't point out that I am the Government Affairs Director for the Whatcom REALTORS(R). As the spokesperson for the County's largest professional association, an association that counts many landlords as members, I have offered to make any and all information in our possession available to council members concerning this proposal. To date, only one member has accepted, but refused to believe anything we said sticking to the mantra that this is about public safety. Public safety may be an issue in a handful of situations, but it is also about affordable housing, privacy rights and due process, and it is about private property rights, not just for tenants, but landlords as well. A council member joked that perhaps it was time to put cameras into rentals. Funny right now, but when you start digging into the proposal, you will realize just how close that statement is to the truth. Remember, it is an election year! Perry Eskridge Whatcom REALTORS(R)

The Zonemaven: Except that for your $30 you get an analysis that plays fast and loose with the facts and suppositions that are not based on any data whatsoever. I would ask for my money back. Read my blog and then have a conversation with Perry.

Perry: Really Dick? Tell me what part you find as "fast and loose" and then we'll have a conversation. Kind of like that house fire in the York neighborhood that you tried to pin on the landlord, only to discover that it was most likely the tenants' fault? I asked you to give me a copy of the report to prove me wrong; nothing ever showed up.

You also went after another property that I recall claiming a bad landlord, only to discover the property was owned by a Canadian Corporation who had not authorized the property manager to make changes.

I had 10 landlords at that meeting with me yesterday. Perhaps you want to talk to them about their business/investments and how they calculate their costs and set rents before you accuse me of not having facts.

Anytime, anywhere Dick!

The Zonemaven: The fire marshal’s report for the Ellis St. and the Grant St. fires have been on my blog since 7 Feb. You can check them out here. You will note that the Grant St. fire was occasioned by a suspected loose wire and not due to actions by the tenants. The Ellis St. fire was occasioned by loose bolts on a heater in the living room. The house had been also been rewired by the owner without being inspected for code compliance. No fault to the tenant here either.

The house with the Canadian ownership was cited by the city code inspector and the student was able to break her lease. You can read about that on my blog entry of 3 Mar 2011 or you can watch her comments before the city council on 28 Feb 2011. The video is on the city’s website. The fact that the owner in Canada did not want to approve the fixes to the house prior to being cited by the code inspector speaks volumes in and of itself.

I am not much interested in finding out the manner in which the landlords calculate their costs. I have no problem with the math of $24 per year. Divided by 12 is $2. If the landlords claim that this will drive up their rents, then I am a confused person. Now if they have been neglecting their properties for years and the place needs repairs, that is the price of doing business and those repairs are deductible on income tax, right? Unless the landlord is not reporting his income from the rentals. Then the situation becomes dicey. And then there were all those rent increases over the decades. What occasioned those if the upkeep was not being done?

As for the items to be inspected, you should look at the inspection list from Sacramento, CA or from Pasco, WA. These are not nit-picky lists that look for banister or window heights. They are straightforward categories that deal with health and safety. The Pasco checklist is on my blog entry of 9 Feb 2011.

The city of Pasco seems to be able to do thousands of inspections each year with one inspector. Your claims that Bellingham will not be able to do the relatively low number of random inspections it now envisions does not hold water. And just how many times do you think that these cases will end up being challenged? Pasco ended up with about 20 cases that were referred to their code enforcement board in 2010. These cases had to do with landlords who did not get a license or who did not present a certificate of inspection.

Perry: This is great. Thanks Dick for posting this information.

York Neighborhood: Yes, loose connection that arced . . . in an electrical box in the attic above the bathroom . . . on a circuit that, from the landlord's own mouth, had three space heaters plugged into the same circuit. No operating smoke detectors (tenant responsibility under the RCW by the way!)

Loose bolts on a heater? An inspector doing an inspection every 15-30 minutes is going to check the attach points on a heater? By the way, I can do some re-wiring in my own home if I want to. The question is when was the wiring done, who did it, and was it, in fact, illegal?

The Canadian house is a debacle to be sure. I will not defend the condition of that home. In any event, however, there is a lesson with respect to this proposal First, the City proposes to demand a real live person to be personally responsible for the actions of a corporation! Well, I've got news for you. I can have a corporation that owns property and the WHOLE reason for corporate law is so that I don't have personal liability beyond my investment. I know that many people in Bellingham disagree with the exitence of corporations, but in any event, that is the law. Look it up. Moreover, there are corporations that have more than one house and do a good job of renting to tenants. You can be sure that a couple suits by the City against those corporations is going to cost more than $300,000.

The other point about that case is even more compelling. You admit that the current process employed by the city was effective. As soon as the complaint was made by the tenant to an existing compliance officer, the matter reached a resolution. Why do we need an entirely new program to accomplish something that, in your own words, was possible before?

Finally, I don't care what other cities have done. Why? Because Bellingham's proposal is clear-Landlords must meet the requirements of the International property Maintenance Code (Pasco requires meeting a different code (Uniform Housing Code)). Speculate all you want about how that works in cities other than Bellingham, but in the end, the Bellingham ordinance is the Bellingham ordinance. It won't matter what Pasco or Sacramento or any other city does . . . it will matter what Bellingham does.

If you think you are going to inspect for compliance with an International code using a note card as the Council suggests, and have that inspection withstand scrutiny when you try to enforce against it, you are dreaming.

You may not intend to look for banister or window heights, but if they are in the code, then they must be enforced, whether you intend it or not. I don't make these rules up, Dick, the courts and the City do.

I think it is very instructive that your comments are formulated without caring about how the landlord/tenant relationship really works or what it is really like to be a landlord. Based on that, I'm looking forward to your future posts. Perhaps you will post some results from the survey with those "unbiased" questions phrased with the answer already included? That will be much fun!

The Zonemaven: The space heater story is from the landlord but even if we accept that version, the fact is that the heating system in that house was inadequate in the first place. Otherwise, why would the tenants be plugging in extra heaters AND how are they to know that the electrical system was inadequate for the load? As for the smoke alarms, we tend to forget that these are warning devices for when inadequate or unmaintained systems (electrical here) fail.

The heater in the house on Ellis was not being maintained by the owner. How is the tenant to know about heaters? As for the rewiring of the house without a permit, that was not a factor in this particular case but it does demonstrate that landlords do cut corners placing their tenants at risk. How many of your colleagues would want your kids to move into a home that was rewired by the owner and not permitted by the city. And how would you ever know that?

The issue of corporations, liability and having the name of a real person to contact are not synonymous. Nobody is suggesting, nor have I heard it said during council committee meetings, that the city wants to go after an individual behind the corporation. They do want to have a contact, a person who can respond to issues regarding the condition of the rental. The legal issues with respect to LLCs as corporate entities can still be recognized.

As for the current complaint-only system being effective as evidenced by the Canadian rental being cited by the inspector, you forgot to mention the history of the place to begin with and the horror story behind the young woman's fight to get something done over a long period. You also fail to recognize that tenants are not experts in housing conditions and are often living in units that are substandard because they are not aware of problems that might cause illness, injury or worse.

Well, Pasco and other cities also work under the International Building Codes and local requirements and they manage to inspect rentals without going into the minutiae. Look at the Pasco checklist and go to the Sacramento, CA website and you will find that these checklists are not onerous. If there were such great problems with Pasco's program, how can you account for the fact that it works?

I am not weeping for landlords. They are in business and must accept the risks. Since they offer a service/product to the public, what they offer must be safe and that safety should be verifiable. I suggest that the landlords do as they tell the tenants to do all the time - take action under the current Landlord-Tenant statute. If you continue to suggest that the current law is good enough for tenants then you must also accept that it is good enough for you. If it is not, then you and your associations can lobby for a stronger code. But don't look to me to do that for you.

As for the survey, it was intended to be a window into the state of rentals in this city and not a scientific product. You did not point out to the readers here that about two-thirds of those who took the survey were satisfied with their rental. Clearly those taking the survey were not steered into complaining about their units with tricky language or deliberately biased questions.

Rental Rates Rising? Not Because of Rental Licensing

2011-06-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

For years now, landlords and their associations have been telling the citizens of Bellingham of their concern over rental rates increasing if licensing and inspection of rentals is put into effect. The Zonemaven, not having been taken in by their feigned anguish, countered by saying that landlords have been raising rental rates for decades for reasons that have nothing to do with licensing. But the landlords stuck by their guns, so distressed were they with the thought that they might have to pass to their renters a $24 per year licensing fee.

Now we discover that, because rental availability is tight (the vacancy rate is 2.4% - or as low as 1.6% last fall), rental prices will be going up. (See the Herald article on the subject by clicking here.) The reason for the rise in rental rates has nothing to do with any factor other than the mere fact that landlords are taking advantage of a tight market. Nothing is forcing them to hike rates. So much for their concern for the pocketbooks of Bellingham's renters.

“Twenty-Three Years of Rental Licensing — Observations”

2011-06-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

The following is a letter to the citizens of Aurora, IL from Albert Dennis, Sgt-at-Arms of the American Association of Code Enforcement. The original can be found on the site of the City of Aurora, IL by clicking here.

"Rental licensing is one systematic tool used by municipalities for maintenance of income housing stock. The City of Aurora adopted its licensing program in 1982 during my second year of employment. Aurora’s population was 90,000 (currently 157,000). Aurora modeled its ordinance on ideas from programs used in Oak Park, Illinois (program begun in 1958); Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, among others.

The initial ordinance pertained only to rental properties containing three or more units (1000 buildings). Inspections of rental properties prior to 1982 were complaint driven. City Fathers determined that approach was insufficient. The City Council passed the licensing ordinance over protests primarily from the local board of realtors.

Aurora has amended the ordinance over the years adding: All rental units in the downtown core (1990), rental condo units in complexes having at least fifty units in which at least fifty percent of the units are rental (1990), rental two-units (1995), rental portions of owner-occupied two-unit buildings (2003) and single-family rental units (2004).

Positive observations relating to twenty-three years of participation in rental licensing:

The lion’s share of complaints prior to adoption of rental licensing were from the thousand buildings containing three or more units. Today very few complaints originate from those buildings. The overall building maintenance is drastically improved. Many unsafe and ghastly living conditions have been eliminated from those multi-unit buildings. Property values have escalated in buildings that once appeared destined for demolition. Potential property buyers know the buildings have had regular minimum standard inspections.

Licensing gets us into all the units over time. Prior to licensing many tenants failed to complain about dreadful conditions for fear of landlord retribution. That was a much bigger issue in 1981 than now. Rental licensing has weeded out the old time, do nothing, rent collecting slumlords that infested the City of Aurora when I hired on in 1981. Regular inspections also aid in enforcing occupancy standards in rental properties.

Additionally, the registration process for new owners affords us the opportunity to educate them about code requirements and encourage them to attend the local landlord training school offered by the City of Aurora. Many landlords have improved their tenant screening practices as a result. Registration also provides an owner/agent database for easier contact should the need arise. Licensing can bring in some income depending on the fee schedule. Aurora’s rental license fees are low and do not cover the cost of the program.

Negative observations relating to twenty-three years of participation in rental licensing:

From my point of view the number one negative issue regarding rental licensing is the intrinsic bureaucracy that comes with it. Initially notifying and registering property owners is a major event. The better your database capabilities and relationship with your computer people the easier this task will be. Monitoring owner changes and registering the new owner must be done. Making inspection and re-inspection appointments is time consuming. You must have enough inspectors and support staff to operate the program.

Getting a licensing ordinance adopted can be difficult. Many municipal rental-licensing programs are started because of neighborhood activist initiation and support. Some have been blocked due to the town’s “old boy” network and connections with the council.

Initial inspections of poorly maintained buildings can be lengthy. I recall spending two or more hours in three and four unit buildings in 1982-85. Those inspections generated extensive violation notices and time-consuming follow-up inspections. Licensing also forces you to expend manpower on buildings that don’t really need it. In Aurora, this is offset by granting one or two-year waivers of fees and inspections on buildings found to be up to code. (Note: some municipal rental licensing program licensing periods are two, three, four or even five years, rather than annual, as in Aurora.)

Weighed together I believe the positives have outweighed the negatives in Aurora. Frankly, we had some deplorable rental buildings twenty-three years ago. Some still aren’t palaces, but they are much improved."

Fire Marshal Declares "Unsafe Conditions" at Daylight Building Rental - Students Displaced

2011-05-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

Several WWU students have been displaced as a result of the action of Fire Marshal Jason Napier, who posted a notice of Unsafe Conditions on an apartment in the Daylight Building. The building was the site of a fire last week that destroyed a portion of the inside of a restaurant on the main floor. After the blaze and as a result of questions raised regarding the adequacy of emergency exits in other areas of the building , the Fire Marshal contacted one of the tenants at the Chestnut St. side and discovered that two of the sleeping areas within an apartment had no adequate fire emergency egress. (Click here to read a previous blog entry on the subject)

Two of the five students will have to move and their sleeping areas must remain unoccupied and not rentable until such time as Daylight Properties corrects the violation of the fire codes. Unfortunately, this takes place at a time when the students are approaching the end of the quarter and should be spending their time on theme papers and preparation for exams, not on dealing with unsafe rental conditions. Had the city already had a robust rental licensing and inspection program, we likely would not be talking about this.

[Photo at left of "fire escape" serving as entrance in the Daylight Building. Several bedrooms in the unit in question did not have adequate emergency egress.]

As the City Council considers rental licensing, it may wish to avoid a variation of inspection that would allow for landlords to self-certify, i.e., sign a form that declares that their rental units meet certain standards. The manager of the Daylight Building, Mr. Kane Hall, declared before the council in February, that there was no need for licensing and inspection of rentals. The implication was that the landlords, Mr. Hall included, can take care of their own properties.

That seems not to be the case here as either Mr. Hall was unaware of the dangerous condition in this rental unit or he was aware and rented it nonetheless. If he was not aware, then that calls into question the ability of a landlord to self-certify since, in essence, he had already made an implied certification of rental unit safety in leasing the unit in the first place. If he was aware of the safety issue and rented the unit in spite of that knowledge, that calls into question his motives in placing his renters in danger. In either case, mandatory inspection of rental units would have uncovered this safety issue while self-certification, which depends on knowledge that Mr. Hall appears to lack, would have proven useless.

How many other rentals in Bellingham contain similar problems with lack of egress? Ironically, one of the tenants had already encountered a similar situation while looking for a rental in a prior year. (She described this encounter to the City Council the very same evening as Mr. Hall was railing against licensing and inspection. (Click here to view the video of those comments at the 11:29 mark) Looking for a rental with 5 bedrooms, she and her companions visited a home that, although advertised as having five bedrooms, only had four. When they asked the landlord about the fifth bedroom, he indicated that he would install a plywood partition in the living room.

Yes, these incidents are anecdotal, however, when one considers the life/safety issues found in other cities with rental inspections and the disturbing results of the WWU student-sponsored survey of rentals in Bellingham(Click here to read the survey), there is little room for doubt that a rental licensing and mandatory inspection program is needed - NOW.

Note: Thanks to our Fire Chief, Bill Boyd, and our Fire Marshal, Jason Napier, for their rapid investigation.

WWU Students Do The "Joe Show" on Rental Licensing

2011-05-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Three Western Washington University students appeared on the Joe Show (KBAI 930AM ) on Tuesday, 10 May to present the findings of the survey on rental conditions that they sponsored over the past 7 months. Appearing on the show were Wesley Dyer of the Viking Community Builders; and Nicole Hicks and Chris Chatburn of the Western Democrats. You can hear a podcast of the show by clicking here.

For those who are not familiar with the survey of rental conditions, you can read the survey executive summary and the detailed survey results and comments by going to the site of Neighbors for Safe Rentals (click here). Follow the links to the survey.

From the survey executive summary: "Results from the rental survey suggest that many buildings would have failed inspection at the time of the survey. Many of these code violations represent an immediate threat to health or safety. Given the low number of official complaints that are made to the city, this survey indicates a substantial void between existing problems and reported problems. A “complaint based system”, as exists now, is not a solution that will bring the deficiencies into the open. Rental housing stock needs oversight and enforcement to correct substandard housing and to motivate unresponsive landlords and rental management companies to make repairs."

Rental Inspection Story Behind the State Street Fire, 10 May

2011-05-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning around 5 o'clock, a fire destroyed a good portion of a restaurant in the Daylight Building on N. State Street in Bellingham. (Click here to read the Herald article and here for some video of the fire.) The blaze was essentially confined to the restaurant, however, some businesses and residential apartment units had some smoke damage. Among those fleeing the building was Western Washington University student, Nicole Hicks. Nicole lives in an upper floor apartment that she rents with several other Western women.

Just a few months ago, Nicole presented before the city council an account of an emergency safety problem in her apartment. (You can view Nicole's comments by clicking here and going to minute 11:29 on the video) She was there to urge the council to pass an ordinance mandating health and safety inspections of rentals. She described her apartment in the very same Daylight Building whose MAIN access was via a fire escape in the alley behind the building. The sole window in her room only opened a mere 6 inches. The only other "FIRE EXIT" was by a ladder in one of the bedrooms that gave access to a skylight that when opened allowed the residents to climb yet another ladder leading to the roof. It is there, on the roof, that these young renters would have to take refuge during a fire that blocked the "main" entrance. A recipe for disaster for we all know that fire tends to burn upward.

The irony of this situation is that just after Nicole spoke to the city council in support of licensing and inspecting rentals, the manager of Daylight Properties, Mr. Kane Hall, told the council, in a curiously incoherent and rambling plea for more crime fighting in the downtown area, that landlord licensing and inspection was not needed to fight crime or to do anything else for that matter. Licensing was an unnecessary burden that would create an out-of-control bureaucracy, said Mr. Hall. The connection between rental licensing and decreasing crime in the downtown area was not apparent. (Click here to listen to Mr. Hall before the city council at minute marker 30:30.)

Yet the very property (the Daylight Building) that he manages and offers to renters has a unit that has no viable emergency exit. Before the council, Mr. Hall called for fines for those who do not manage their properties responsibly. The Zonemaven hears Mr. Hall's plea and agrees wholeheartedly. Perhaps those fines might be levied on those who rent units without proper emergency exits.

Luckily for Nicole and her roommates yesterday , the MAIN ENTRANCE, i.e., fire escape, was not blocked by the fire, however, the outcome might not have been such. Not surprisingly, Nicole is now, more than ever, apprehensive about living in that rental unit. Moreover, this was the second fire at the Daylight Building in the last several months. The earlier fire was in a recycling bin near the mailboxes at the principal entrance to the upper floors of the building that, luckily again, was extinguished before any lives were lost.

I call on our Fire Chief, Bill Boyd, to take a closer look at the Daylight Building. We have had several reprieves with respect to fires in rentals this year, notably in the York Neighborhood. (Click here to refresh your memories) How much closer to a tragedy do we have to get for there to be action on licensing and inspecting rentals?

WWU Student Interest in Rental Licensing Not Flagging

2011-04-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Rental licensing and inspection remains a topic of substantial interest at Western Washington University where over 8,000 students plunge into Bellingham's rental market each year. This mass of renters vie with local residents for the estimated 17,000 to 18,000 rental units within the city limits. The closer to campus, the better and the less expensive, the better. That sets up a dynamic akin to a game of musical chairs but with financial implications as this demand tends to drive up prices and create an atmosphere conducive to poor conditions.

With the recent publication of a survey on rental conditions by the Viking Community Builders and Neighbors for Safe Rentals, Western Front student journalist Emma Chadband reviewed the findings and wrote an article, Rentals Get Poor Marks in Tenant Survey, that appeared on April 19th. The article is available by clicking on the image at left.

The appearance of the article is timely in that this is the season during which most of the students are seeking housing off-campus for the next academic year. Perhaps, in some small way, the information on rental conditions will spur some students and their parents to ask hard questions about the condition of these rentals. In the long run, the most effective mechanism to ensure that rentals are safe is to have a mandatory licensing and inspection ordinance.

You can read more about the rental survey itself by reading my previous blog entry entitled Survey on Rental Conditions - "Bellingham, we have a problem". (Click here)

Survey on Rental Conditions - "Bellingham, We Have a Problem."

2011-04-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

"The percentage of responses indicating serious health and safety issues was disturbingly high" in some categories that described conditions in Bellingham's rental stock, according to a survey summary released this week by the Viking Community Builders (VCB) of Western Washington University*. The six month long survey; conducted by the VCB in coordination with Neighbors for Safe Rentals (NSR), a community group; ended in early April 2011. The purpose was "to determine the extent to which rental conditions...might indicate the necessity for a rental licensing and inspection ordinance." Over 500 renters took the survey and hundreds provided written comments. [You can read the executive summary of the survey by clicking here. The detailed responses to each survey question can be read by clicking here.]

Among other items, the survey asked the renters to respond to 10 questions regarding the condition of their rentals. The health and safety categories were: electrical, fire, security, plumbing, mold, heating, structure, refuse, vermin and surfaces. The following table provides the data on these categories.

Summary Table

Type of Health or Safety Problem	% of Issues Reported to Owner But Not Resolved	% of Issues Not Reported to Owner	Combined % of Renters Noting a Problem

Electrical	14%	8%	22%

Fire Safety	9%	28%	37%

Security	13%	21%	34%

Plumbing	17%	12%	29%

Mold	25%	20%	45%

Heating	24%	23%	47%

Structure	12%	14%	26%

Refuse	7%	8%	15%

Vermin	8%	8%	16%

Surfaces	17%	17%	34%

The combined total at the column to the right represents the totality of the specific problem whether the problem was reported and not acted upon or not reported at all. In either case, the health safety issue was not addressed. A comprehensive licensing and inspection program would discover and correct these potentially dangerous conditions. Additionally, there are those health and safety issues that are not recognized by either the renter or the landlord which suggests that the percentage of these problems may be even higher each category.

The fact that 64% of renters,who responded to the survey were satisfied with their rental indicates that the respondents were not taking the survey merely because they had a bad experience. Nonetheless, 28% did state that their landlord/property manager was ineffective in responding to complaints and 28% said that their landlord/property manager was simply unresponsive. Not surprisingly, a majority (65%) of those responding were students renters who number in excess of 8,000 per year in a market of over 17,000 rental units.

Hundreds of written comments on rentals were made in three categories:

1. Comments on Rentals (Click here to read these comments)

2. Comments on Not Reporting Issues (Click here to read these comments)

3. Comments on the Cost of Renting (Click here to read these comments)

The executive summary provides the following conclusion:

"Results from the rental survey suggest that many buildings would have failed inspection at the time of the survey. Many of these code violations represent an immediate threat to health or safety. Given the low number of official complaints that are made to the city, this survey indicates a substantial void between existing problems and reported problems. A “complaint based system”, as exists now, is not a solution that will bring the deficiencies into the open. Rental housing stock needs oversight and enforcement to correct substandard housing and to motivate unresponsive landlords and rental management companies to make repairs."

*Additional assistance in publicizing the survey was provided by the student club, Western Democrats of Western Washington University.

Tacoma Passes Weak Rental Inpsection Ordinance

2011-03-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

The City of Tacoma, Washington has passed a rental inspection ordinance - "lite". Landlords in Tacoma have already had to obtain a business license to operate a rental since 2004 (Click here for more information) Unfortunately, the addition to the municipal code, entitled Provisional Rental Property License, passed by the Tacoma City Council earlier this year, calls for inspections only at the time the city discovers that there are problems with the rental.

A report of poor conditions can come from a renter; from an official of the city, who may incidentally view violations; or any citizen, such as a neighbor who might have knowledge of a problem. This is equivalent to the complaint-based systems, in existence in many cities, that do not work. The Centers for Disease Control have spoken on complaint-based systems and has judged them ineffective (click here to read the document).

You can read the new Tacoma ordinance by clicking here. You can read a Tacoma Weekly article and a King5 News piece on the topic by clicking here and here.

The Zonemaven immediately became suspicious regarding the strength of the law at the time he discovered that the Tacoma ordinance had been supported by the local rental owners' group, the Rental Housing Association. Our equivalent local Northwest Rental Owners' Association is vehemently opposed to any rental licensing in Bellingham. Any indication that this group begins to support rental licensing is a flag that the specific licensing proposal is not really worth considering as it will be inherently weak.

Other cities in Washington have passed more robust licensing and inspection ordinances. Pasco has had a very effective licensing ordinance for over a decade. Tukwila, Prosser and Seattle passed rental licensing ordinances in 2010. Unfortunately, Bellingham appears poised to follow the example of Tacoma with a rental-licensing-"lite" proposal, soon to be on the table. More on that in a later blog entry.

The Tacoma ordinance is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2012.

WWU Students Recount Dangerous Rental Conditions To The City Council

2011-03-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

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.

Bellingham Mayor's Commission Sends Him Second Message in Support of Rental Licensing

2011-02-17T13:10:00.001-08:00

At its 16 February 2011 meeting, the Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission (MNAC) reaffirmed its recommendation to Mayor Pike that he support the implementation of a rental licensing and inspection ordinance in Bellingham. This follows some very animated discussion on the topic during the February MNAC meeting (click here to read about that) The motion reads: "In order to maintain a safe, healthy rental housing stock, the Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission recommends that Mayor Dan Pike support the implementation of a self-supporting, effective rental housing licensing and inspection program as soon as possible in 2011." (Vote was 13 yes, 5 no, and 1 abstention)

This motion was the second such recommendation to Mayor Pike. Last year on 17 March, MNAC sent a similar message to the Mayor, to wit: that “a rental housing licensing and inspection ordinance be drawn up for review and discussion in 2010 in a public process." This recommendation was also approved by an overwhelming vote but was manifestly ignored by Mayor Pike. In fact, last year Mayor Pike and then Planning Director, Tim Stewart, actively sought to derail action on rental licensing and inspection by the City Council. Click here and here to read about the Mayor's tactics.

85% of the neighborhoods voting on the 16th, supported licensing and inspection with a statement even stronger than the one they sent Mayor Pike last year. Not an insignificant percentage. Perhaps this time this recommendation will not fall on deaf ears in the Office of the Mayor.

Rental Inspections - Pasco Did It With One Inspector

2011-02-09T12:41:00.000-08:00

Over a decade ago, Pasco, WA decided to license and inspect its 6,000 rental units. One inspector, doing 8-10 inspections per day, completed the first inspection cycle in two years. He used the checklist pictured at left (click on the image to enlarge it). Not all units were inspected. Those rentals that fell under other inspection regimes, such as with HUD (Housing and Urban Development) or with state certified inspectors, were taken off the list. Only a sample percentage of apartment complex rental units were inspected. This also reduced the number of city inspections.

Bellingham has about 17,000 rental units. Using a methodology similar to that used in Pasco, two inspectors in Bellingham would be able to complete an initial inspection cycle easily in 3 years. This coincides with the restrictions placed on the frequency of inspection by the 2010 Washington State legislation on rental licensing, i.e., once every three years. (Click here to read Bill 6459)

So the horror stories from the landlords regarding the cost of a program to the city appear unfounded. In my recent exchange with the governmental affairs director of the Whatcom County Association of Realtors®, he claimed that, in talks with city officials here, they projected the program would need 5 or more inspectors and that they would only be able to perform several inspections per day - each. This is not born out by the Pasco experience. That is why I have continued to implore the city council to bring Mr. Mitch Nickolds, Pasco's code enforcement officer, to Bellingham to present the facts about initiating a licensing and inspection program for rentals. Instead our city executive opposes licensing and inspections and creates a poster child in the form of Auburn, WA; a city that licensed rentals but never instituted an inspection program.

In a recent conversation with Mitch Nickolds, I mentioned to him the contention by our mayor that Pasco is not a good example of licensing and inspection since there is such a large migrant worker population in Pasco vs. Bellingham. (My answer to the mayor here has been that we have our own migrant population in the form of students, more than 8,000 of whom pass through here on a yearly basis seeking housing.) Mr. Nickolds said that although they found substantial life threatening problems in the migrant worker rental housing, they also were surprised by the very serious problems found within the units occupied by the elderly. One can conclude that the migratory nature of the rental population is not the sole determinant of poor rental conditions as our mayor would have us accept. Indeed, more stable groups, such as the elderly, lend themselves to exploitation and poor housing conditions. One can add to this mixture the fact that during the second round of inspections two years later, Pasco found serious deterioration in many previously inspected units. This, after only two years.

Fire Marshall Reports on York Fires

2011-02-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

The Bellingham Fire Marshal has issued his reports on the fires at 1404 Grant St and 1418 Ellis St. earlier this January. The Grant St. fire displaced its 4 renters, three of whom present would have perished had not one of them decided to get out of bed to eat. The fire on Ellis St. was contained to one unit in a home that had reportedly been renovated into several apartments. You can read about these events by clicking here, here and here.

The fire marshal investigates in order to rule out arson. He will provide information on the cause of the blaze but does not rule on who is at fault. This is done by an investigator so that fault may be assessed for insurance purposes. Unfortunately, these results may not be made public in the near future or ever for that matter.

Images of the appropriate portions of the report of the fire marshal on these two fires are on the left (click on them to enlarge). The Grant St. fire originated in an electrical junction box located in the attic above a bathroom. The cause was likely "arcing from loose connections" The report also indicated that "Smoke alarms were not installed in residence." (Further contact with the fire marshal revealed that this sentence means that there were no functioning smoke alarms in the home.) Two of the residents personally told the Zonemaven that they had reported this to the management company before the holidays. They had also indicated that the electrical system was also giving them trouble in the form of flickering lights and tripped circuit breakers.

As for the fire on Ellis St. it appears that the cause was a fan attached to a gas heater that had tripped a circuit breaker repeatedly the day before. The fan was held in place by bolts that were undersized allowing the fan to fall off the heater onto the rug where the fire started. The investigation also revealed that the house was rewired years ago, however, the installation was not inspected for compliance with codes. Earlier news reports indicated the smoke detector did not work.

Landlords will complain that they install smoke detectors that are then sabotaged by the tenants or not maintained by the tenants who neglect to replace the batteries. I might remind the landlords that the smoke alarms are the last line of defense and that it is the underlying condition of the home that is the basic question. Working smoke alarms do not make a rental safer, they merely protect the renter from possible harm if there is a fire. But smoke alarms do not help with issues of mold, plumbing, vermin, structural deficiencies, etc. With these issues the first indicator of a problem is often disease or injury.

During the Zonemaven's appearance on The Joe Show (click here to refresh your memory on that event), Mr. Perry Eskridge, Government Affairs Director of the Whatcom County Association of Realtors®, phoned with some comments on the Grant St. fire. He spoke to having had contact with the owner of the property who informed him that the home had been renovated in 1982 with monies from a block grant and that it conformed to code as of that date. The home had also been inspected by Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He further stated that 7 smoke alarms had been installed in the property in 2007 and that the tenant had the contractual responsibility to replace the batteries. Mr. Eskridge said also that there were three space heaters plugged into one outlet.

It seems to me that a house that was up to code in 1982 might need a bit of work by 2011 or, at least, a periodic inspection. In Bellingham, though, that is not necessary. As for the smoke alarm installation of 2007, I wonder the reason for which the management company did not take action on its own during that period. Does the company not make periodic visits to ensure the health and safety of the tenants as well as the condition of the building? (The Washington State landlord tenant law allows the landlord to enter the home with a 48hr notice.) Had no members of the management team entered the premises for four years? Was there turnover of the tenants during that period? As for the space heaters, one might ask the reason for which the tenants felt a need to install such devices. One usually does not use space heaters unless the central heating system is inadequate.

As mentioned above, because the fire is now under investigation by inspectors to determine fault for insurance purposes, we may never know the entire story. These matters tend to remain private, unless perhaps one of the former tenants takes the owner to court. Or, we can avoid most of these incidents by having a licensing and inspection program in Bellingham that will protect BOTH the tenant and the landlord.

Silence from Landlords on Rental Rate Increases

2011-02-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

A recent story in the Bellingham Herald indicated a low rental vacancy rate in this area and suggested that, consequently, rental rates may rise as much as $50 per month. You can click here to read the story.

The shortage overall does not mean that vacancy rates in the county are equally low. Vacancies tend to be lesser in number in areas of high demand, such as close to Western Washington University (WWU) where we know who will bear the burden of higher rents - the students. So the prediction is that rents will rise in these areas not because of rising costs but because there is less competition. Hiking rates in the absence of competition is call greed.

Not surprisingly, I have not heard a flood of protest from the landlords or their associations about rental rate increases in this instance. We did hear from the landlords at the time they learned that they might have to pay the staggering sum of $3 per month, if a licensing and inspection program were to be created in Bellingham. They cried faux crocodile tears in loco parentis for the poor tenants who would have to bear the burden of the pass through of a potential $3/month fee even though there would be no obligation to pass the fee in the first place.

I have posited before in this blog that the landlords have needed no excuse in the past 30-40 years to increase rental rates in this city at the times it suited them. (Complicit in this was WWU and the city. WWU because it built no housing on campus for decades and the city because it allowed the huge influx of essentially migrant tenants without taking any steps to protect the neighborhoods or control the rental housing stock.) To wit: the $525 per month for the filthy dump described in my blog entry of 18 January (click here to read that) and the $1330 per month for the hovel on Grant St. that burned out the student renters last month (click here and here to refresh your memory on that event).

So I call upon the landlords to be true to their concern about rising rental rates due to licensing fees and to suppress the urge to raise rents for the simple reason that they can.

Fairhaven Rental - Off the Charts (A Sequel)

2011-01-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

Last week the Zonemaven provided the story, as told by a parent of a WWU student, of a disaster of a detached ADU in Fairhaven. The ADU was on a lot that also contained a two-story, single family home that also appeared to be in questionable condition. Click here to refresh your memory on that horror show. A photo of the house and the detached ADU is at left.

A few days ago, the Zonemaven visited that house to give the renter(s) a flyer on taking the survey of rental conditions sponsored by the Viking Community Builders. (Click here for the survey) A young man answered the door and told the Zonemaven that he had just moved in weeks before and that he was a construction worker. He was vaguely aware of the problem with the ADU and knew that someone had just moved out. The Zonemaven spent a few minutes telling him the ADU story and then asked him if he had experienced any serious problems with his rental. He said "not really" and then invited me into the house to take a look.

First of all, the treads of the stairs leading to the small front porch had just been replaced however they were of uneven length. The treads were also not uniformly deep creating an uneven stair pattern. The entry way into the home was dirty and plaster was falling off the wall exposing the bricks underneath. The foyer linoleum was filthy and badly worn. Entering the living room, the Zonemaven discovered an aging and large gas heating unit on the floor that occupied about 20% of the room's floor space. The unit was vented through the wall, presumably to the outside, by metal stove pipe duct work. Several of the access panels of the unit were not in place, exposing what appeared to me to be the ignition element. Since the unit was on the floor, any object dropped on it could easily hit the inner workings of the heater.

Moving into the kitchen, the Zonemaven asked if the windows operated properly. He said that some did, however, the window above the sink would not lock and that he discovered that it would fall out of the window frame - so he screwed it shut. The door to the back foyer had a non-operational locking mechanism. The foyer had a plywood floor that was rotten at one end due to a hole in the wall that let the rain from outside flow from the concrete pad into the house. The kitchen appliances were old and worn but appeared operational. The enamel kitchen sink was badly worn.

The bathroom had recently been partially remodeled and the tub/shower area was new. The tub grout was already separating from the wall/tub junction at one end suggesting that the tub was moving vertically either because of the weight of the person in the shower or because the floor was not stable or both. In fact, the floor was visibly slanted toward the tub and the tenant opined that the sub-floor might be rotted.

The house was badly in need of paint and the gutters in the rear were twisted and partially separated from the eaves. The Zonemaven had no access to the second floor of the residence that was a separate living unit. The renter was not available.

Upon leaving the residence, the Zonemaven went to the alley behind the home where the dilapidated ADU was located. This was the unit mentioned in the first paragraph above. Since the departure of the student renter, the entire south side of the ADU had been stripped of its siding. This was the side that had rotted completely away in one corner.

More from the mother of the student: "Icing on the cake-- My daughter actually cleaned this place before she left so she could get her deposit back! (Including black mold that covered the bedroom wall behind her bed.) They returned the deposit less $75 for carpet cleaning! The carpet was not cleaned before she moved in nor before her housemate at the time, who moved in prior to her. I can't imagine they are going to clean the carpet now. She is not sure if they are tearing down the whole building or just the wall. I was under the impression it was the whole building, but not sure why." ... "FYI her place just had the 2-pronged plugs also. I also wondered about her ancient appliances. It seems the city inspected [as the result of their formal complaint in December] the structural aspects but not the electrical. Hopefully Bellingham will start to have rental inspections!"

She goes on in a later email: "When I first visited my daughter in Feb of last yr I bought her a smoke and CO2 detector because her smoke alarm didn't work right and everything was so old I thought it very possible that it might save her life. The smoke detector that was provided went off continually every time she took a shower and the steam came up from downstairs (since there was no ventilation) so she took the battery out. Not a good thing to do, but I wonder how many ...tenants have the same problem and remove the batteries? ... It seems that for some of these realtors, avoiding blame is all they are really concerned about, not the safety of residents. It is pretty disgusting."

The Zonemaven encourages the residents of Bellingham, especially the renters, to write to the mayor (mayorsoffice@cob.org) and to the city council (ccmail@cob.org) and ask them to do the right thing, license and inspect rentals.

The Chicken or the Egg - Support of a Rental Licensing Ordinance

2011-01-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Support for rental licensing seems to be a difficult topic for some neighborhoods and individuals. To date several neighborhoods have written to the Mayor or to the City Council to indicate that they would like to see licensing and inspection of rental units. These neighborhoods are York, Samish and Sunnyland. The Associated Students of WWU, that represents the student body at WWU, has passed a resolution in support of licensing. The student run newspaper, The Western Front, has also expressed support in an editorial last year. Why are others sitting on a fence?

The argument given is that there is no ordinance to support. This is true . It is also true that the City Council is hesitating on taking action on an ordinance, in part, because there is not enough support from the citizenry. So, we are in this gray zone of hesitant support until a draft ordinance makes its appearance and no draft ordinance until the support is there. Chicken/support - egg/draft. Egg/draft - chicken/support.

Dan Welch, The Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission (MNAC) representative from the Birchwood Neighborhood, reminded the Zonemaven that the commission had asked "that a "mock-up" of this [licensing] program be put to paper...something tangible that MNAC could discuss further." Dan went on to say, "Over the past year we have not been presented with such a mock-up, describing the nuts & bolts of such a program but have been repeatedly pointed to studies of other municipalities." There is no indication that the Mayor acted on this recommendation from his commission.

How might we extract ourselves from this indecision? Perhaps we make take our cue from the students at Western who developed a resolution in which the situation is clearly stated (the findings) and is followed by the suggested remedies (statements of resolve). You can read the student resolution by clicking here.

The Zonemaven maintains that there need not be an draft ordinance and he provides the following suggestions for inclusion in a licensing program. One might simply take a successful, existing ordinance from, let us say, Pasco, WA (Click here to read the 2 page Pasco rental licensing and inspection ordinance) and hang some Bellingham ornaments on it, to wit:

1. An inspection program run by the city that is funded by the landlords as a group through licensing rentals as a business.
2. Inspections at least every 3 years as allowed by law.
3. Meaningful fines for scofflaw landlords.
4. Exclusion of property owners who rent out a room in their own home.
5. Inclusion of unattached ADUs, carriage houses, duplexes, triplexes and all apartment buildings unless they fall under an inspection regime by HUD or some other entity.
6. Language that would help landlords get insurance reductions for being certified by the city inspector.
7. Language that could help landlords deal with the inevitable bad renter. This is a two way street.
8. If any self-certification is considered, that it be proposed only for the several years between actual inspections by the city.
9. Less frequent inspections for rentals that consistently score high in the inspection ratings.
10. Inspection of only X percent of units in an apartment complex of X size.

It is almost 7 years since a licensing and inspection ordinance was discussed at the Bellingham ferry terminal. (Click here to review that event). We had a teachable moment with the fire on Grant St. Thankfully, nobody died for us to learn the lesson but we ought to have received the message about the condition of rentals. Now is the time for action.

Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission Revisits Rental Licensing

2011-01-20T13:03:00.001-08:00

On 19 January, the Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission revisited the rental licensing and inspection issue when the topic was brought forward by the representative of the York Neighborhood, Kirsti Charlton, as an additional agenda item. The Mayor was present for the discussion. The council last brought up the issue on 17 March last year, recommending to the Mayor that “a rental housing licensing and inspection ordinance be drawn up for review and discussion in 2010 in a public process." This recommendation was approved by an overwhelming vote by neighborhood representatives that implies some support for the concept of rental licensing and inspection.

Kirsti introduced the topic by citing the recent fire on Grant St. that almost killed 4 WWU students. (Click here and here to read about the fire) She had a special relationship to the event as she lives in the home next to the now-burned out rental. Kirsti also had an excellent relationship with the tenants. Had the fire not been discovered at its onset, it is likely her home would have been caught in the conflagration.

Anne Mackie, the York Neighborhood Association President spoke about the fire and her relief that instead of having a candlelight vigil for 4 victims, we were having a discussion of licensing and inspection, which, in the future could prevent such fires. Surely a teachable moment without a major catastrophe. Anne called upon the commission members to write letters to the City Council to again call upon them to move on a licensing and inspection program.

The Zonemaven provided information to the representatives present regarding the statistics of inspections in some of those cities that had already introduced inspections of rental units. To wit: 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 are seeing in Bellingham. 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 for doubting council members is why do you 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?

Dave Hopkinson, a resident of the York Neighborhood and himself a rental property owner gave remarks about the rationale for inspections by saying that "we take for granted that when we make a reservation at a hotel, there will be fire alarms, fire extinguishers, as wells as little maps that say "Egress is Here" and "Don't use the elevators in case of fire", and a lighted sign on the corridor that says "Exit" and there will have been an inspection that will be dated on the little tags that are attached to the fire extinguishers. Secondly, that when we eat in a restaurant, it is not necessary to go into the kitchen and look for evidence of cleanliness and absence of vermin, etc. However, for every rental, nothing can be taken for granted, except the good will - or lack of it - on the part of the rental-owner. And even that may not be enough, given the technical difficulty of health and safety inspection (and our collective power of denial)."

The MNAC decided to take up a discussion of rental licensing and inspection at its next meeting. They asked for additional information about the concept. Many had not read, nor were they aware, of the reports and studies that had been prepared for the council on the issue in years past. Of special note in this regard is the study on rental licensing prepared for the council in October 2008. You can read this document by clicking here.

The Zonemaven has written about the dangers of uninspected rentals. Several years ago the Zonemaven wrote a piece on fires in house rentals (Click here to read the piece.) The blog entry ended with this:

Well, what is known about rentals of single family homes here in Bellingham?

Have landlords added or modified bedrooms? We do not know.
Do all bedrooms have fire exits? We do not know.
Do these rentals have smoke detectors? We do not know.
Do these rentals have carbon monoxide detectors? We do not know.
Do these rentals have adequate wiring? We do not know.
Do these rentals have adequate plumbing? We do not know.
Do these rentals have adequate heating? We do not know.
Do these rentals have mold or mildew problems? We do not know.
Do these rentals have insect infestations? We do not know.
Do these rentals have gas leaks? We do not know.
Do these rentals have structural problems? We do not know.
Do these rentals have other safety or health issues? We do not know.
Is there overcrowding in these rentals? We do not know.
Are necessary repairs made by landlords? We do not know.
Is there price gouging by landlords? We do not know.

Is there a system of inspections of rental homes in Bellingham? We do know. None.
Are landlords of rental homes licensed by the city? We do know. None.

Will it take a death or serious injury to spur the city to action?

Do we want to know?

Joe Show with the Zonemaven Available On-line

2011-01-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

You can hear a rebroadcast of the Joe Show (KBAI-AM) from 18 January on the topic of rental licensing by clicking on this link. The show is listed as "Should rental properties in Bellingham have to be licensed and inspected?"

Sharing the program with the Zonemaven was Anne Mackie, President of the York Neighborhood Association. Of note was the phone-in call from Perry Eskridge of The Whatcom County Association of Realtors®.

The download may take a few minutes. Be patient.

Fairhaven Rental - Off the Charts

2011-01-18T15:55:00.000-08:00

At the end of my last blog posting, the Zonemaven promised an unvarnished tale from a renter. That tale follows. The Zonemaven was planning on providing comments but decided to let the story stand on its own. The email quotes below are from the mother of a WWU student. She recounts the recent experience of her and her daughter as they attempt to deal with the management of the daughter's rental. (The photos were taken by them.) It is a rather long read but worth the time.

On 6 Nov 10.

"My daughter is living in what I'm …sure is an unsafe split-level "apartment" in Bellingham. It is apparently a converted detached garage. It is very old. She is a student at WWU and supporting herself. I am visiting for the weekend from […]. I have been here once before and was not thrilled as it looks like an uninhabitable building; however, she assures me that for the rent ($545/mo) it is the best she can get.

She has had a chronic mold problem, but it has exploded in recent weeks. About 2 weeks ago maintenance men came to fix a leaking water heater which is located in the bathroom (and still has water dripping from overflow pipe). The bathroom has no opening windows nor exhaust fan, and definitely has a moisture problem. When they ventured along the side of the house they noticed that there are boards rotted and missing on the exterior with what appears to be moldy exposed insulation. The area of exposed insulation being about 1'x3'. They indicated this was a big problem and would notify the landlord. Nothing has been done. Yesterday, when we went to the property mgt. office, we were told the mgr. would be in Mon. so they would tell him and let my daughter know what he says on Tues.

While here this weekend, we discovered mold on the living room windows, curtain, and bookcase which are in close proximity to the hole in the exterior wall and above the bathroom. There is constant condensation on all upstairs and downstairs windows. To me it looks like the exterior wood siding may all be rotting to some degree (paint is peeled everywhere). It also appears (from insulation protruding inside between the floor and paneling, and which has been painted over) that the walls are made of only paneling, insulation, and exterior wood boards some of which are rotting/missing.

Well, you probably get the picture. I have just gone online to try to discover whom to contact and the health hazards involved with mold. My daughter wants it fixed, but of course doesn't want to move. The property management company, this summer, had her sign an early renewal for another one year lease. In over a year, she has never met the person who is her "property manager." Would building code enforcement be the place to start and would they come to do an inspection upon request? Seems we should start with the landlord, but at this point I do not trust them to put more than a Band-Aid on these problems, because I suspect they know about them."

On 9 Nov 10

"Just thought I'd let you know we filed a complaint with city planning dept. on Mon.

Called [...]prop mgt twice on Mon and the man in charge of that property didn't call back. Left a message that I was filing a complaint. (Also left a message on Fri for him.) No one seems to know his schedule or when he will return the call but they said he talked to the owner and maintenance man last week about what needs to be done to the place. I said it would be good if he gave us an update about that!

I imagine he will hear from the city before we hear from him. Sounded like that would be today. I'll keep you posted."

On 22 Nov 10

"She was finally able to meet with the inspector on Fri. He wrote in his report that a wall is "not structurally sound," roofing needs repair, and there needs to be a railing on the inside stairway. Not sure what else, but she is now going to let the property mgt know in writing with a copy of the inspection report attached. We know they knew about this more than 3 weeks ago when the maintenance men reported it, and they haven't returned numerous calls, but my daughter still has to put it in writing. She also met with the law students on campus on Fri which was apparently really helpful.

Oh, the inspector said she needed to contact that Clean Air group you mentioned regarding the mold. He doesn't inspect for that. Also, the city said they do not contact the owner or prop. mgt. that it is up to my daughter to do that which surprised us. I also wondered at what point they say a building is not inhabitable if the wall is not structurally sound?"

On 30 Nov 10

"My daughter feels like she doesn't have time to do any more than study for finals and look for a new place right now. Maybe when finals are done she can help by giving you the info first hand.

Turns out the city did let her know that they are contacting the property mgt or owner to say they need to fix the problems or abate the building, but my daughter doesn't know what the timeline is. [...]'s prop. mgr. has still not returned her messages.

She did say I could go ahead and send you photos, so some are attached. FYI-it is the bathroom window you can see at the bottom of the picture with the large hole. The inside photo is the corner above the bathroom."

11 Dec 10

"I just have to write anyway as things have gone from bad to worse and it will make me feel better! Never heard from [property management]... until yesterday when they called ME to say my daughter hadn't paid rent for Dec! I mentioned the inspector saying the wall was not structurally sound and that I found it amazing that they never contacted us about that, but only when rent was overdue! She hung up on me. I called back and another woman said while my daughter gave them the inspectors report on Nov 22, (and they knew of the problem from their maintenance men the first of Nov.) their broker said they needed a letter from the city before addressing the problems which they got on Nov 29 saying they needed to fix things within 30 days. They said they've been waiting to send people out to fix, but couldn't get a hold of my daughter because she had let them know her phone was lost (she gave them her email). I pointed out that they found a way to contact me about the RENT and that THEY KNOW WHERE SHE LIVES and could obviously have contacted her at the house. Tom (prop. mgr) did go out there today to intimidate her and tell her he's been to court lots of times and wins.

She went today to the free lawyer at the courthouse who said she has no rights if she didn't pay rent and... that Tom has been to court lots of times and wins because tenants don't do it right. Said even tho my daughter gave notice of the damage in writing, it was not in HER handwriting, (inspection report), and apparently them knowing of the problem a month earlier doesn't hold them accountable if she didn't put it in her writing. And they are fixing it now so she has no case.

She tried to rent another place today, but when they called [property management], even tho she had told them the story, they would not rent to her because [property management] gave negative responses about her to every question.

Plumber and person who came to look at the wall today were nice and supportive and shocked at the condition of the wall. Said hers is not the only [property management] property that doesn't get repairs done. Oh, she got a posted notice today to pay rent + late fee in 3 days or leave. I guess she is going to pay. She doesn't know what else to do. Tom at [property management] said she could leave while the work is being done and not have to pay rent during that time. woo woo. Don't really know if it is possible for her to stay while the work is being done if she wanted to. And she doesn't know when it is going to be done. Don't know if they will still hold her to her lease. Wouldn't surprise me.

Hope she can help with your blog. Might help things change for future tenants. It is so unfair.

On 13 Dec 10

"Just wanted to correct something I wrote. My daughter still has never met Tom. Her conversation last week was over the phone when he actually called her back for once.

Sounds like she is held to her lease since they are fixing it. She is going to pay tomorrow. A 2nd atty she consulted with Saturday agreed she doesn't have a case, but said she should talk directly with the contractor about repairs, whether she can stay while they repair, etc. instead of going through [property management]. So she is going to try that."

5 Jan 11

"Before [she] left WA, [property management] told her they were going to fix the place and she could stay if she wanted. They either didn't realize the extent of the problem or wanted to get 1 more month's rent out of her. As of about Dec 15 they had not applied for a permit from the city. When she returned from […] on Dec 29th there was a letter saying to please move as soon as she could because they are going to tear the building down and rebuild it. So they broke the lease and she hopes to get her deposit back though I don't at all trust them for that. I think I told you they gave her a bad reference when she tried to move out earlier in Dec. so another place would not rent to her (even though she told them the story). Then when [property management] wanted her to move out they gave her a decent reference so she could get into another place. She should have the last of her things out by now. Discovered there was only a sheet of paneling between her and the outside world in the place where the large hole was. She also had to throw away her bed because the wall was black with mold where it was up against the wall. I just hope she doesn't have health problems from this down the road."

The property owner is an LLC from British Columbia. If there is another side to this story from the management company or the owner, I would invite them to send me their comments. They know who they are.

Rental Association Email Distorts Licensing Issue

2011-01-17T16:20:00.000-08:00

The Zonemaven has obtained a copy of an email that the Northwest Rental Owners Association has sent to its membership regarding the issue of rental licensing and inspections. Let us take a look at several of the comments in the email. You can read the entire text of the email by clicking on the images on the left. [The text has been transferred from the email to an image to enhance readability. Errors in the text are those of the author of the email and marked with (sic). Email addresses have been removed. No other alterations have been made.] The email's author is Angela Barnes who is listed as the association's Secretary on their website.

The missive begins by stating that there does not appear to be too many complaints about landlords not maintaining their properties. The problem with this statement is that it ignores the fact that we have a complaint based system, i.e., one that is inherently defective. It is a system that demands that renters know that there is a problem to begin with. That implies that they are capable of judging all sorts of systems within the rental unit, e.g., heating, gas, plumbing and electric, not to mention structural integrity, pest control, mold and fire prevention. This requirement is manifestly absurd as applied to the tenant as well as the landlord. Neither is qualified to make judgments on rental safety unless they also happen to be qualified building inspectors.

So if there is a lack of complaints, one cannot assume that the reason is that there are no problems.

Ms. Barnes claims that she as a landlord immediately takes care of problems with her rentals. That is laudable, however, there are about 17,000 rental units in Bellingham. A look at the property data base at the office of the Whatcom County Assessor, shows that she owns, at least under her own name, four properties in Bellingham, one of which appears to be her residence. So then, what of the other 16,997 rental units over which Ms. Barnes has no control?

The Zonemaven allows that not all of these thousands of landlords are deficient in the maintenance of their properties. There is, however, a lacuna that cannot be denied and can only be filled by inspection of rentals.

Ms. Barnes then states that she will be forced to raise rents in order to comply with "new regulations", although there are no such regulations, since the law has not been drafted. One would think that as a good steward of her property, as she has told us she is, there would be no need for further maintenance expenses. The only cost to pass on to the renter, if she should so decide, would be a modest licensing fee, estimated to be around $3 per month per unit to fund the inspection program. She also assumes that she would have to pay a third party to do the inspections, although that also has not been determined since there is no draft ordinance. Surprisingly, that $3 per month for the licensing fee would bring in a substantial sum that could finance a fairly robust inspection by the city that would be of no further cost to the landlord.

She also declares that these inspections are a "duty most are capable to do themselves" This is a contention that I reject out of hand for the reasons I presented in the previous paragraphs. As I have pointed out over the years in this blog, landlords, as if out of the blue, claim to be worried about raising rents, however, that has not stopped them from doing so on their own over the past several decades, even in the absence of licensing and inspections.

Although not mentioned in the email, I would expect that the NROA would have on its agenda this week the house fire on Grant St. in the York Neighborhood that nearly took the lives of 4 WWU students. (Click here and here to read about this fire) In this case, the tenants did that which Ms. Barnes suggests is the solution to poor rental conditions but the management company ignored their pleas for smoke detectors and an inspection of an obviously faulty electrical system that produced the fire. Landlords have claimed time and again that they would police the few "bad eggs" in their midst. What a fine time to begin.

The landlords might also discuss the ways that a rental licensing and inspection will be of benefit to them. They can advertise that their property meets city standards for health and safety. There may even be insurance premium reductions for maintaining a certified property.

I do thank Ms. Barnes for publishing the instructions on taking the rental condition survey (click here to go to the survey) that is sponsored by the Viking Community Builders of WWU. Probably no body of renters knows more about the conditions of rentals in this city than the 8,000 students who are dumped on the rental market each year. Perhaps the landlords might be surprised in some cases with respect to the unvarnished experience of these renters, allowed to express themselves without fear of retaliation.

The Zonemaven's next blog entry this week will be about one such case.

Stay tuned.

Zonemaven to Appear on The Joe Show, Tuesday, 18 Jan

2011-01-17T10:37:00.001-08:00

The Zonemaven will appear on The Joe Show on 18 January from noon until 1pm on KBAI-AM, 930. Also appearing will be Anne Mackie, the President of the York Neighborhood Association. The topic is rental licensing and inspection, to include the recent and nearly fatal house fires in York Neighborhood rentals.

The show is hosted by Joe Teehan, who also has a morning radio show on KGMI with Patti Brooks.

Illinois Code Enforcement Attorney's Blog Notes Twilight Zoning in Bellingham

2011-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

Linda Pieczynski is an attorney and municipal prosecutor in Hinsdale, Illinois where she writes a blog on code enforcement. Not surprisingly, Linda supports rental inspections. She collects examples of rental property code enforcement issues and places them in her writing. Several days ago, she noted the Zonemaven in her blog entry entitled College Towns and Fire Code Violations. You can read that blog entry by clicking here.

She states in the header to her blog: "I regularly blog about issues that arise in code enforcement and invite comments and ideas from you. I use examples from around the world to illustrate the issues inspectors face on a daily basis."Here is a sample of her comments on inspections of rental housing.

"College towns and code violations go together like students and text books. Students seek cheap housing and are willing to live in terrible conditions if the price is right. Some landlords take advantage of this by not maintaining their buildings and others are fearful of the damage student tenants cause and are reluctant to spend money on upkeep because of that. "

"If a local jurisdiction doesn’t have an effective enforcement system, whether it’s in court or at an administrative level, there will be no incentive for bad landlords to fix up their properties.

"The day after the fire [Yonkers, NY], city inspectors visited the property and issued four summonses against the [owners] for illegally converting their basement into an apartment, illegally using the first floor of their two-family home as a boarding house and blocking fire exits, among other violations."

"...without vigorous code enforcement, buildings deteriorate and people suffer. To think that a family would be better off in a shelter than in one of these buildings is tragic. Housing inspectors who make life better for people who are tenants should be proud of the work they do."

"In a recent post, I discussed the foolishness of owners who don’t fix their rental property and end up facing civil liability judgments that could have been avoided if they had just followed the fire code. The family of a victim of a porch collapse just reached a settlement for $2.7 million dollars in Chicago. The victim was trying to adjust a chair on the porch when he fell through the rails. "

"A landlord in Ontario, Canada recently pleaded guilty to fire code violations in connection with a fire that occurred in an apartment building. What caught my attention in the article that discussed the case was a statement that landlords can be held liable if any occupant is injured in a fire because the building is not compliant with the fire code. This is true in the United States, as well. Owners run a risk when they do not fix code violations because if someone is injured or killed, there is very good chance the owner will get sued for negligence. "

" Once landlords become used to a rental inspection ordinance, they tend to do a better job of making minor repairs so large ones don’t become necessary."

"A rental inspection ordinance that involves licensing landlords is a very effective tool in keeping property from falling into disrepair or worse. ...While many landlords oppose it at the beginning, successful ones eventually are won over as they see that negligent landlords have to raise their rents because they have to spend money on repairs. This takes away a competitive edge that they have had since they didn’t spend money on normal maintenance.'

I invite my readers to go to Linda's blog where they can find more nuggets of wisdom on rental licensing and inspection.

More on Fire at Student Rental on Grant St.

2011-01-13T08:35:00.000-08:00

The two WWU renters (from the Grant St. rental that was destroyed by fire) to whom I spoke indicated that they had brought the problem of smoke detectors to the attention of the management company a month or so ago. They also said that there had been problems with tripped circuit breakers over time and that some wall plugs were the old two prong receptacles and not the grounded, three prong kind.

Last night, the Zonemaven attended a York Neighborhood meeting where Bellingham Fire Marshal, Jason Napier, explained that the origin of the fire was a junction box in the attic above the bathroom on the second floor. The cause of the fire is still unknown.

The four renters narrowly escaped death. Had not one of the renters awakened to get a snack, nobody would have discovered the fire. Since there were no working smoke alarms, they would likely have succumbed to the gases emanating from the blaze.

Also placed in danger were neighboring homes. The York Neighborhood consists of many homes on small lots. Given the proximity of one home to another, the chances for a house fire to spread to adjacent structures is likely.

A search of the property records at the Whatcom County Assessor's office reveals that the rental house is owned by David Hansen. The two renters to whom the Zonemaven spoke indicated that the property is managed by Lakeway Realty and that the company has relocated the four renters to another rental house.

The students' belongings had sustained some water and smoke damage although the fire seemed to be limited to the second floor and attic. The burned out carcass of a mattress on the front lawn provided mute testimony to the events earlier that night.

You can watch a video of the fire taken by a bystander by clicking here.

Second Rental House Fire in York Neighborhood Displaces 7 Occupants

2011-01-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

In a news release on 11 January, Chief Bill Boyd of the Bellingham Fire Department reported yet another fire at a rental home at 1418 Ellis St. This fire occurred several hours before another in a rental on Grant St. in the same York Neighborhood.

The Ellis St. fire was called in just before 6pm on Monday. Arriving firefighters found smoke coming from the first floor of the home that had been converted into apartments. Although the fire, which was burning in furniture on the first floor was quickly extinguished, the house sustained structural and smoke damage.

Although there was a smoke detector, Chief Boyd indicated that a smoke alarm was not heard. The fire is under investigation but is not considered suspicious.

As with the fire on Grant St., the Zonemaven will obtain the report of investigation. It remains unclear in the news release whether the smoke detector was operable.

The York Neighborhood has a large number of aging homes, many of which are well maintained. Unfortunately, some of those used as rentals are in sad condition, at least as viewed from the outside, which only makes one wonder about the conditions found within. This is one of the reasons for which the City Council must pass a rental licensing and inspection law.

WWU Students Burned Out of York Neighborhood Rental

2011-01-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

Four WWU students were burned out of their rental home on Grant Street in the York Neighborhood in the early morning hours Tuesday, 11 January. Although it is too soon for the official report of the cause of the fire from the fire department investigators, it appears that the fire may have been electrical in origin. The Zonemaven and Anne Mackie, President of the York Neighborhood Association were able to speak to two of the renters, to include the one who had discovered the fire and alerted his housemates. They indicated that previous problems with the electrical system and the absence of functioning smoke alarms had been reported to the property management firm, however, the firm did not respond.

Earlier in the evening, the students noticed that the lights were flickering. When one of the students checked the circuit breaker after hearing some crackling sounds, he found that the breaker had been partially tripped. He reset the breaker before going to bed. Later during the night, he decided to get up and eat at which time he found flames near the ceiling in the upstairs bathroom. At that time he alerted his housemates who then fled the home prior to the arrival of the fire department. Since the smoke alarms did not function, a tragedy was averted only because one renter happened to be awake. Understandably, the students are quite angry.

In an email to the City Council this afternoon, Anne Mackie stated:

"I am thankful that these young people got out unharmed -- also their cat. However, I am dismayed that our City Council continues to delay action on the need for a rental inspection and licensing program.

I appeal to you, City Council, to take up the issue of rental housing safety as a priority. Our city needs a program of rental housing inspections, fire code enforcement and rental business licensing so that our citizens are protected. What is it going to take to make this a priority?

York neighbors will be discussing this incident at the York Neighborhood meeting tomorrow night, 6:30 p.m., at Garden St. Methodist Church, and we will be assisting these young people in any way we can to help replace their belongings or help them find safe, decent housing while they are in our city."

The Zonemaven will follow this story closely and provide further reports in this blog. It may be that the City Council and the Mayor will find this their "teachable moment" and take the issue of inspection of rentals more seriously.

Reminder - Take the WWU Student Survey on Rental Housing Conditions

2011-01-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

Since last November, the Viking Community Builders of WWU, have been running a survey of conditions in rentals within the city of Bellingham. You can take the survey by clicking here. One need not be a student to take the survey. You only have to be or have been a renter in the city.

You can read my previous posting on this topic by clicking here.

Two Bellingham Programs Assist Rental Property Owners

2010-11-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

The City of Bellingham offers two programs to assist rental owners in maintaining their properties. One provides loans for repairs of rentals and the other a means to keep rentals crime free.

"The purpose of the City of Bellingham Rental Rehabilitation Program (RRP) is to assist qualified investor owners of rental properties located within the City limits to rehabilitate existing units and to increase the supply of rental housing stock available to low and moderate income families." RRP details can be found on the City of Bellingham website by clicking here. For additional information you can phone Lisa Manos at 778-8391 or send an email to her at lmanos@cob.org.

The Crime Free Multi-Housing Program is part of an international program that began in 1992 and is now available in over 40 states in the US. In spite of its name, the program is also available to owners of single family rentals. From the city's website is this, "The Bellingham Police Department coordinates the training for the Crime Free Multi-Housing Program. It consists of an 8 hour training session presented by representatives from police, local screening companies, landlord-tenant attorneys, and fire. Its goal is to provide a comprehensive approach to reduce crime and improve the quality of life in rentals. A certificate is awarded upon the completion of the 8 hour class. Rental owners and managers benefit greatly, learning how this program can increase profits and prevent crime too!" You can find information on this program by clicking here. You can also call Officer Mark Young at the Bellingham Police Department at 778-8618 or send an email to myoung@cob.org.

The Zonemaven finds it interesting that on one hand the city offers these programs to rental owners in recognition of problems having to do with the condition of rentals while the Mayor contends that there is no need for rental licensing and inspections for health and safety reasons.

Rental Licensing is Fiscally Desirable to Communities

2010-11-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

As Bellingham ponders licensing and inspection of rental properties, the City Council and the Mayor ought to consider the longer term, fiscal ramifications of such a program.

College Station, Texas, home to Texas A&M University, is considering licensing of rental properties. (Click here, here and here to read about these efforts) My contact provided me with information from a certified public accountant in that city who spent 22 years auditing tax returns for small businesses. He concludes that the "operation of rental properties on established, single family neighborhoods [is] a transfer of wealth from owner/occupant to investor/landlord." He opines that over the long run, incursion of or conversion to rental properties leads to decreased property values. Poor property maintenance degrades curb appeal of these properties and one can only wonder about the condition of the rental inside when the outside is not cared for.

There is a decrease in asset value that erodes the tax base for the local jurisdictions. There is a concomitant loss of quality of life for the nearby homeowners due to noise, additional traffic, and an unstable resident population. The tenants can also suffer from poor rental conditions that are hazardous to their health or downright dangerous. Even the landlord can lose at sale time as the value of his asset is equally degraded by surrounding rentals that are not kept in good condition.

He goes on to say, "But the biggest loss of property value is suffered by the owner/occupant in the neighborhood. Due to the federal tax treatment of the owner's personal property, he suffers a double whammy. Any losses by the owner/occupant due to the decrease in the value is not allowed, as a tax loss at any time (usually at the time of sale). On the other hand, the investor/landlord, while generally realizing a positive cash flow covering out of pocket expenses, can additionally deduct for tax purposes all depreciation, interest, taxes, insurance, management fees, etc. etc. This invariably allows a tax loss from the rental properties that can offset other taxable income from wages or passive income up to the losses plus $25,000. The result to the investor'/landlord is a cash savings in federal taxes year after year regardless of any general decline in asset value."

He continues, "The result of the rental activity in the established neighborhood is a general decline or reduction of asset value in the absence of any real estate boom. The owner/occupant suffers a general uncompensated loss in asset value while an investor/landlord realizes a decrease in taxes paid year after year resulting in a transfer of wealth. Since it is outside our ability to correct the inequity of the federal tax code, in the interest of all concerned, the value of property should be protected by whatever means possible."

Given the tax treatment of rentals, any argument that rental properties are not a business becomes ludicrous. All businesses in Bellingham are licensed with the exception of rental properties. Even landlord associations refer to themselves as the "rental industry." It is time to license this industry and to inspect its units for the health and safety of the renters and to ensure that the rental stock does not degrade property values and erode the tax base.

On-Line Survey of Rental Conditions in Bellingham by WWU Students

2010-11-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

The Viking Community Builders of Western Washington University (WWU) are sponsoring an on-line survey of renters in Bellingham to gather information on the condition of the more than 17,000 rental units in the city. If you are or have been a renter (student or non-student) in Bellingham, you can take the survey by clicking here.

The survey is an extension of actions taken last spring by the Associated Students of WWU who published a resolution supporting licensing and inspection of rental properties. You can read the resolution by clicking here. Each year over 8,000 of WWUs student body rent off-campus. These renters should be able to provide a picture of the conditions of these rental properties.

City Council Committee Work Session on Bellingham Rental Licensing

2010-11-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Planning/Neighborhoods and Community Development Committee of the Bellingham City Council met in work session on 27 October to discuss the issue of licensing and inspection of rental housing. Committee members are Terry Bornemann (Chair), Jack Weiss, Michael Lilliquist and Seth Fleetwood. You can read the agenda item for the meeting by clicking here.

The Zonemaven attended the work session, after which he sent the following missive to the committee members.

"Dear Committee Members,

There seemed to be several discernible areas of discussion at your 27 Oct work session on rental licensing in Council chambers. I would like to comment on each.

License rentals but retain a complaint based system. That is essentially what Bellingham has at this moment absent the licenses. The city is not flooded with complaints for the simple reason that complaint based systems do not work. I have already sent to the Council a copy of a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study that determined that tenant complaint based systems are ineffectual. I have attached the study again for your information.[Click here to read the report] It is not entirely clear why the Council and your committee want to revisit this issue each time they meet. Again, I will quote the first paragraph of the CDC paper:

“Code enforcement systems that operate solely in response to tenant complaints, although the prevailing norm nationwide, are highly ineffective and have limited impact. This approach fosters the decline of rental housing conditions since tenants may not know how to register complaints or may be reluctant to complain out of fear of retaliation by the landlord. In contrast to sole reliance on complaint-based approaches, proactive, periodic inspection programs can advance primary prevention more meaningfully. “

I might add that neither the landlord nor the tenant is aware of many life threatening conditions.

Which brings me to…

Education as an approach: I am interested in the methodology that the Council might employ to educate the tenants of 17,000 rental units. Even if there were an efficient and inexpensive method to reach all of these people at least once, what level of expertise on the condition of properties might one impart to this highly varied group? (Not only that, each year Western Washington University alone deposits about 4,000 new renters into our neighborhoods as the freshman class leaves the dorms.) This educational approach is no more than a close corollary of the complaint based system for it depends entirely on the tenant to move forward on a complaint after finding (with every limited knowledge and skills) a hazardous condition. I refer you again to the CDC report. As for educating landlords, the same condition applies. How does one educate a property owner sufficiently to identify serious or hidden defects in a rental unit? Nevertheless, the self-described “rental industry” claims that there are only a few bad apples, although the manner in which they have come to this conclusion is not evident not having had any training. If they have some information about these bad apples, let them come forward and save everyone the time and effort to inspect all these properties. Do the landlords even have a list of all the rental properties in town? If they do not have a list, then the city would have to create and maintain a list, if only for the purpose of “educating” them, let alone finding the properties with appalling conditions – all those bad apples that the “rental industry” tells us about.

NB. One might also, while we are at it, ask that the city approach the Health Department to demand that it stop the health and safety inspections of restaurants. Instead the Health Department can establish a website where a checklist for restaurants will be posted so that diners can carry out their own inspections before having a meal. Would not that inspire confidence in our eateries? We can also get rid of several FTEs [full time equivalents] of food inspectors for additional savings for Whatcom County.

Which brings me to…

Identifying rental properties: As some say, this should not be rocket science. The County Assessor maintains a comprehensive data base of all property owners and their holdings. For those properties for which the mailing address differs from the property address, one can rightly assume that the property is rented. Thus identified, to be exempt, the property owner would have to demonstrate that he or she is, in fact, living at the property. Stiff fines for misrepresentation or failure to register a rental would discourage scofflaws. Of course, creating the data base implies resources.

Which brings me to…

Identifying start-up costs: Anything short of a licensing and inspection program is essentially ineffective, so I will not dwell on the costs of any lesser measures. It is preferable that the Council do nothing at all rather than adopt a program that places a thin veneer over the issue that gives the appearance of having done something substantial for the health and safety of our renters. Again, I would refer the committee and the Council to the City of Pasco where they have already have done all this preparatory work and whose code enforcement officer has already indicated to me his willingness to assist us. The fact that we are facing tough budget times is no reason to be timid before a health and safety issue. The cost for the portion of an FTE needed to establish the data base of landlords probably could have been covered by the price of the new truck that was recently bought for the Neighborhood Compliance Officer. The city might also look to volunteers to assist in scrubbing the Whatcom Assessor’s property records to establish a Bellingham rental data base for licensing purposes. I would volunteer and might easily find several others to join me in the project.

Looking for meaning in data on complaints to date: Some on the committee seek to find meaning in the statistics on property related complaints filed over the past several years. The assumption is that these complaints are indicative of the problem so that lack of complaints equals lack of problem. More confusing is that the reporting on complaints mixes all sorts of property issues such as lack of permits and violations of various and unrelated city codes. The number of complaints about dangerous conditions in rentals is, therefore, extremely small in number but given the inability of renters to recognize dangerous situations and their reticence in making a complaint to the city, this is not surprising. Having only a handful of complaints each year on a rental stock of 17,000 units should be a surprise to all. That either means that we have a pristine rental market or, as the CDC report says: complaint based systems do not work and we have a hidden problem. You chose the most plausible. As the celebrated scientist Carl Sagan once declared, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” The Council would do well not to draw conclusions from this gloubi boulga of limited statistics.

Regards..."

At the end of the session, the committee gave directions to staff. The first was to explore the use of the current system of licensing business to license rental properties. The second was to explore the strengthening of enforcement of current codes through civil warrants and targetted enforcement against problem properties. Staff is also looking into a program of educating tenants, placing anti-retaliatory language (landlord against tenant) in the city code, and using the data base of properties in the Planning Department to track additional data.

Unfortunately, many of the "solutions" discussed by the committee continue to place the onus on the tenant to learn, to recognize and then to report. These expectations are unrealistic and serve no purpose other than to absolve the landlords of their responsibilities.