Rentals and Restaurants - Commonality

Betsy Pernotto is a resident of the Birchwood neighborhood.  On May 5th she made the following comments to the city council regarding the inspection of rentals in Bellingham.  So often, the spoken comments at our city council meetings become lost in the ether of the video record which cannot be searched easily - or at all - unlike the written record.  Here are Betsy's unedited comments, then, for the written record.

"Imagine going to a nice restaurant with friends with plans for enjoying a relaxing dinner.  Now imagine how you might feel if you went to that same restaurant and had to wonder if the food was safe to eat because restaurants were only inspected if there was a complaint.  Put your mind at rest.  In Whatcom County the Health Department inspects restaurants on a yearly basis, not simply on the basis of complaints.  Now imagine renting an apartment or house for yourself or your family, assuming that the residence is a safe place to live.  Then you discover that some electrical outlets spark when you plug in an appliance and you start to question the safety of the electrical system.  Or your child has frequent asthma attacks triggered by the black mold on the wall of her bedroom because of an unrepaired leaking tub.  Then you realize that rental housing is not inspected unless there is a complaint.  But you have paid first and last month deposits and you are afraid of being evicted if you complain because you have no money to put up for another apartment if you had to move.   That is the current system in place in Bellingham.

We require restaurant inspections because food-borne illness can be deadly and we want the public to be safe eating in those business establishments.  When we pay for a restaurant meal, we have the expectation that the food will be safe.  We deserve to have the same expectation when we pay for rental housing.  Safe housing is as much an issue of public health as is safe food in a restaurant.  Eating in a restaurant is a choice we make.  However, we spend many more hours in our homes than we do eating in a restaurant and the dangers we might face there can be as life-threatening as food-borne illness.

I urge City Council to enact an ordinance requiring registration for all rental units in Bellingham with a small monthly registration fee for each unit.  Before a system of inspections begins, the City needs to clarify for landlords the City’s requirements for safe, healthy rental units and needs to educate tenants about their rights.  The goal of this ordinance should be a safe and healthy residence for all tenants.  To that end, I support a higher inspection rate than offered in the current proposal by the Mayor and her staff.  I support the inspection of all rental units (except perhaps those built in the past five years) over a five year period.  I also support the creation of a fund to relocate tenants who must move because the unit in which they are living is found to be unsafe.  In this way no landlord would feel singled out and every tenant could have the peace of mind of living in a safe home."

For the record.  Thanks, Betsy.

Rental Health and Safety Chugs Along at City Council

The effort to bring a minimum level of health and safety to the renters of thousands and thousands of rental units in Bellingham chugs along with another meeting of the Planning Committee of the city council this coming Monday.  There is a lot not to recommend the draft ordinance in its present form.  To that end, I have sent the following commentary to the city council.

"Dear Council Members,

I have reviewed the redraft of the rental safety ordinance provided in the agenda packet for the 9 Jun Planning Committee meeting  [then click on agenda item 20382] and have the following comments:

Paragraph 6.15.030 B  states that “ cosmetic conditions that do not affect structural systems, fire safety systems, sanitation components or weather resistive systems shall not be considered as part of any declaration of compliance or certificate of inspection required under this chapter.”   I would suggest adding “electrical systems” which do not appear to be captured by the categories already stated.

The ordinance 6.15.040 B 4 further states that no fee is required for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) when the owner resides in either the single-family residence or the ADU.   The idea behind this is that an owner, if living on the property, will pay more attention to either the ADU or the main home.  Perhaps one might make a case for this if the owner lives in an attached ADU or the main house as he/she will be living under the same conditions as the renter and subject to the same dangers.   With unattached ADUs the dynamic is different, the danger to the owner is less or not present.  For that reason unattached ADUs and/or the main dwelling on the property ought to come completely under this ordinance and pay the required fee.

6.15.040 requires a Declaration of Compliance. “As a condition to the issuance and/or renewal of a residential rental registration, an applicant shall provide a valid Declaration of Compliance prior to  the issuance of a registration. A Declaration of Compliance submitted under this chapter must state that each unit complies with the requirements and standards listed in BMC 6.15.050.-B.1-13 and/or authorized under BMC 6.15.050.C using a checklist provided by the City, and state that there are no conditions presented in the units that endanger or impair or could endanger or impair the health or safety of a tenant.”  This is an unwarranted requirement to place upon a property owner who is not trained to make such declarations.  Such declarations, if made, will present a false notion to potential renters that somehow the rental unit is a safe and healthy one.  This is a disservice to our renters as well as being superfluous.

The continued call for an annual audit of merely no more than .5% of the city’s rental units is a ridiculously small number from which to gain any useful information that may be extrapolated to estimate the condition of rest of the rental housing stock.  Again, I refer you to my comments in an earlier email to the council that gives a real world picture of an existing inspection regime.

'After the presentation by Jeff Thomas on the rental ordinance budget estimates at the council’s Planning Committee meeting last Monday morning,  I phoned Debbie Scott, a senior code enforcement officer in Pasco, WA.   They have had an inspection program for over 15 years.  I went over with her some of the information that you received from the Planning Dept that morning and got a quite different story from her.  

She has been inspecting rental units in Pasco for 13 years.  Here is her experience.  A single family home rental takes about 20 minutes to inspect.  For apartment buildings, they do about 10% of the units.  Accordingly, in a 100 unit building she looks at 10 units (unless she begins to find more problems) and is done in about an hour.   She schedules inspections at about 30 minute intervals so that she can write up reports, call owners, etc.  A single inspector usually can do about 8 (maybe more) at day unless the inspector encounters a really bad property, then the number of inspections would drop to about 4 or so since they may have to immediately get people out of an uninhabitable unit.  The first round of inspections in Pasco 15 years ago (about 4,000 units) was done by one inspector in a two year time period.   Scheduling may be an issue from time to time but they pretty well have it down to a science.'

Based on the above, my contention is that the staff has grossly overestimated/inflated the cost of providing inspections at various levels and that we can, with a reasonable fee per unit, engage in a systematic inspection (using city inspectors) of all rental units at the rate of 20% per year, or 2,600 to 2,800 units (by inspecting, for example, only 10% of units within apartment complexes the actual number of inspected dwelling units would be greatly reduced) .  I refer you to the agenda packet item prepared by Mark Gardner with the comparative costs/estimates of programs in other cities and of options with respect to Bellingham.  See attached.

The draft ordinance paragraph 6.15.170 provides for a City Council Review and Sunset Provision. “Before January 1, 2019, the City Council shall review the chapter's effects on the community and the problems the chapter was intended to remedy and shall repeal, continue or modify this chapter. Failure by the City Council to act in accordance with this section shall cause this chapter to expire at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 2019.”   This is a totally unnecessary limitation to the ordinance which can be repealed at any time by an act of the city council.   Because of restrictive portions of the ordinance, such as the audit of no more than .5% of the units, a future council will have little in the way of statistically valid information (approximately 200 inspected units maximum) on which to base a judgment regarding the efficacy of the program.  This sunset clause can only be a sop to those who oppose this ordinance by providing an expectation that the ordinance will be allowed to languish into oblivion by a future council without a cumbersome debate.

The changing of the name of the ordinance to Residential Safety Program seems odd in that any reference to rentals has been omitted.  This ordinance is about health and safety of housing units that are not merely “residential” but specifically offered for occupancy by an owner for a price.   I suggest the ordinance be properly identified as applying to rentals, e.g.,  Residential Rental Safety Program. 

I would also like to point out that there is a growing proliferation of so-called “vacation homes” for rent within the city limits.  These homes, if not otherwise actually occupied by the owner for  a significant period of the year or licensed to operate as a transient rental, ought to fall under this ordinance.  It is not altogether clear that this is the case according to 6.15.020 V regarding transients.  For an idea regarding vacation rentals I refer you to [this] site that lists such homes.  (Note: some of the rentals listed are in Whatcom County)."

I encourage my readers to contact the city council at ccmail@cob.org to encourage them to pass an ordinance that calls for the inspection of all rental units.  We have already had several renters seriously burned in a preventable rental fire while nearly two dozen have lost their residences and belongings because of fire or contamination.  

Planning or Development Commission?

 Note:  This piece appeared earlier this week on NWCitizen.

As a result of receiving notification of the plans to rezone two properties in the Samish Neighborhood, I found that the company spearheading each of these rezones was owned by a member of our seven-member Planning Commission.  In and of itself, this was not a problem, if the particular Planning Commission member recused him/herself from the consideration and vote on these rezones when they came before the commission.  However, on further investigation, I learned that every member of the our present Planning Commission is involved with or has/had close ties to businesses that owe their existence to development, i.e., real estate, consulting, construction, architecture, etc.  Here is the rundown of the current members and their affiliations/employment:

Tom Grinstad – Architect with Grinstad and Wagner

Jeff Brown -  Assistant Executive Director at Bellingham and Park Lane at Bellingham, a nursing home.  However, his wife works for Northwest Ecological Services which advises clients on wetland and shoreline permits for development.

Garrett O'Brien – Volonta Corp. - A construction firm

Ali Taysi – AVT Consulting – Land use and permitting  (His company is involved in the two rezones I mentioned above.)

Phyllis McKee - Investment real estate management

Steve Crooks – Petrol NW Consulting (He spent several years in Bellingham in the 1970s and returned in 2007. He is a retired real estate project manager. He was responsible for handling eminent domain and zoning appeal cases for BP Exploration Oil’s retail and distribution sites. He served as BP's information officer for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response team in the summer of 2010. He is currently president of the Cordata Neighborhood Association.)

Cerise Noah - Realtor/broker with Windermere

I must state up front that this discovery by no means suggests any member of the Bellingham Planning Commission is involved in nefarious activities based on his or her affilitation and appointment to the commission.  What I do suggest is that we can surely have a more diverse body involved in our planning process. Of the tens of thousands of adults in Bellingham, are only those involved in development available to serve on the Planning Commission?  How wide a net is cast at the time of an opening on the commission? Five of the current members will serve until at least 2017 (exceptions are Brown and O'Brien) thus ensuring an imbalance with development-related members.

Unfortunately, the one assured means of code-mandated neighborhood input into the planning process was rendered useless in 2012. The Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission (MNAC) was, by city ordinance, written into the process of neighborhood and comprehensive plan amendments. The concept of discontinuing the involvement of MNAC (by ordinance) was proposed by Mayor Linville in late 2012, at which time the MNAC representatives foolishly voted themselves out of the planning process. (Note: I am a member of MNAC and voted against the mayor's recommendation.) With that single vote, they gave up one of the few opportunities for the neighborhoods, as a body, to officially weigh into planning and serve as a counterbalance of sorts to the preponderance of development-related representatives on the Planning Commission. The new city ordinance on the duties of MNAC (BMC 2.33.040) allows MNAC to merely offer advice: "The MNAC may elect to review proposed changes to the city's comprehensive plan and neighborhood plans and provide comment on those proposed changes for the Mayor to consider."  The agenda bill (19808) of early 2013 that was presented by the mayor to the City Council stated that dropping the requirement to review these plan ammendments would allow MNAC members to focus on "broader, city wide issues." I am not sure what is more broad, city-wide or vitally important than neighborhood and comprehensive plan ammendments. 

Not surprisingly, there also seems to be some confusion over the actual name of the commission. The city ordinance that authorizes the commission (BMC 2.24) refers to it as the Planning and Development Commission. The commission's bylaws, adopted in 2011, begin by saying, "The official name of the organization shall be the Bellingham Planning Commission."  The name, Bellingham Planning Commission, was expressly selected with the adoption of the commission's 2011 bylaws and the Bellingham Municipal Code was to have been updated at that time. It appears council action is still necessary.  Although there is a small difference in wording, the implication of dropping "development" from the title reflects where the emphasis should be, i.e., directly and emphatically on planning.  Perhaps the future composition of the Planning Commission will reflect that emphasis.

  

Comments on Mayor's Proposed Ordinance for Rental Registration

I have sent the email below to the city council's Planning Committee to voice my concerns regarding the proposed ordinance to ensure the health and safety of the renters in Bellingham.   They will meet to consider this agenda bill at 10:30am on 21 April in council chambers.

From: richard conoboy
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2014 4:50 PM
To: 'Weiss, Jack'; 'GKnutson@cob.org'; 'rjmurphy@cob.org'
Cc: 'CLehman@cob.org'; 'Lilliquist, Michael W.'; 'TBornemann@cob.org'; 'ptvargas@cob.org'; 'Linville, Kelli J.'; 'jthomas@cob.org'; 'pruffatto@cob.org'; 'mgardner@cob.org'
Subject: Mayor's Rental Registration Proposal

Members of the Planning Committee,

I have had the opportunity to review the proposal by the mayor for registration and inspection of rental units (Agenda Bill 20382) and would like to offer several preliminary comments to you prior to the Planning Committee meeting [on Monday].   That being said, I would like to say also that it is obvious that a lot of work went into this draft ordinance and that not all portions are insufficient to the task of ensuring the health and safety of our renters.  Such parts of this draft should be maintained.  There are some major problems, nevertheless, and these I outline below.

Regrettably, the essence of this proposed ordinance is a continuation of the current complaint-driven system with the addition of registration and a dollop of self-certification.  Without a strong, comprehensive and cyclical inspection system of all units predominantly carried out by city employed-code inspectors, substandard housing will continue.  We know that complaint-driven systems do not work.  For evidence look at the past 50 years or so.  If this system had worked, we would not be discussing this issue today.

The self-certification component is essentially asking that a landlord act as an inspector.  No one has been able to demonstrate that either landlords or tenants have sufficient knowledge of building issues (even if provided a checklist) to make determinations about health and safety problems.  Were landlords so capable, professional inspectors would already be out of a job and the state and professional certification of code inspectors would have no purpose.  Such a requirement for self-certification is not likely to produce safer units but to lull both landlord and tenant into a false sense of security.  What happens after the first electrical fire maims or kills a tenant after the landlord self-certifies that the rental unit’s electrical system is just hunky-dory?  What takes place after a landlord is unable to recognize that the deck at the back of his unit is structurally unsound and it collapses with a dozen party-goers on it?

The provision for an “audit”  of  “no more than”  .5% of the registered rentals each year is a manifestly insufficient replacement for cyclical inspections of all units.  .5% is equal to approximately 65 units based on the city’s estimate of 13,000 rental units eligible to be brought into the system.  In fact, the ordinance does not even require the inspection of the maximum number of units under the .5% rule but any number up to the equivalent of .5%.   So the city could safely inspect anywhere from 1 to 65 units and call it a job done – requirement met.  Even at 65 units per year, it will take the city about 200 years to eventually inspect/audit all the units. 

The 3 year sunset provision is unnecessarily short and perhaps even unnecessary.  The city has to have some leeway for start-up time to register all rental units and then begin inspections.  On what basis will a future city council decide  3 years hence that the ordinance is successful?   How many units will have been inspected under this proposal by the sunset date – 65?  130? maximum, maybe?   That about equals the same useless statistical data and basis for action that the enforcement staff presented to the city council months ago about code enforcement complaints received in recent years. 

There should be no exemption for detached ADUs and  carriage houses associated with single family homes.   Given that these units are separate, even owner occupation of one of the units is not sufficient incentive that the owner will routinely take care of the other, separate unit in which the renters live.   Look right now at all the unregistered and poorly maintained detached ADUs where the owner is living in the main unit.  In fact, the incentive is to rent both the main house and the ADU/Carriage house to make additional money.  Duplexes and single family rental homes in which the landlord lives in an attached ADU or in one of the duplex units might well be appropriately exempt.  With the landlord actually living under the same roof and physically sharing the same quality of maintenance, the incentive for safety becomes a tad more personal to the owner.

Last, I think the stated purpose in the introduction of the draft ordinance should be made stronger by saying “ensuring the proper maintenance of residential rental housing” .  The idea of merely “encouraging” landlords to maintain their units is not a sufficiently strong statement.  We do not encourage builders to adhere to building codes but require them to do so.  Why should we only “encourage” landlords to maintain rental units for which members of the public will pay money to live?

Regards,

Dick Conoboy

Bellingham, WA

Mayor's Rental Registration Proposal Sent to City Council

At the 16 April meeting of the Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission the Director of Planning, Jeff Thomas, reviewed the mayor's framework for a rental registration program that I had addressed in a previous blog entry last week.   The framework presented was a modification of a proposal made to the city council earlier in the year. 

Today, the updated proposal from the mayor , consisting of a memo outlining the framework and a draft ordinance, was posted on the city council website.  You can access the documents here.  The agenda item will be considered by the Planning Committee this coming Monday, 21 April at 10:30am in city council chambers. Normally, this consists of a presentation to the committee members of the proposal by the mayor and her staff.  Public comments are not usually heard at this time, however, the committee chair may invite members of the public to speak.  This is only the first in a number of meetings that are possible as the Planning Committee debates the measure and reports its discussions to the full council. 

As I had warned, the framework speaks to a weak inspection program.  In fact, upon registration, rental owners will only have to self-certify, in an un-sworn declaration, that their units meet basic safety and health standards.  In turn, the city will require an "audit", that is an actual inspection each year of randomly chosen units.  The sample will be painfully small, a meager .5% (one-half percent) of the total number of rental units in Bellingham now pegged at approximately 13,000 units. Do the math. That is 65 units to be inspected annually to ensure compliance.  Based on the experience (percentage of failed units) of other cities with inspection programs of all units, we can reasonably project that MINIMALLY 1,500 - 2,000 of Bellingham's rentals are sub-standard and a danger to the occupants.  That translates into health and safety dangers for nearly 5,000-6,000 tenants based on the average occupancy of a dwelling unit in the city.  Consequently, the proposal is to attempt to remedy that dangerous situation for thousands of renters by looking at a mere 65 units per year.  In a few decades, the city will have hit them all.

Stay tuned.  I will be providing further analysis of this proposed ordinance and program.   In the meantime, attend the Planning Committee meeting next Monday or watch the proceedings on BTV10.  You can also write your concerns to the city council at ccmail@cob.org and to the mayor at klinville@cob.org.

Six Rental Fires and a Meth Contamination since 2011.

In mid-February a group of five WWU female students were the victims of a 
fire which left the Garden St. home they rented uninhabitable (see photos).

Hole made by firefighters

Fire burned through roof at top

  The young women escaped unharmed but lost much of their possessions to the flames or smoke and water damage.  The cause of the fire is still undetermined as the fire department awaits the actions of one of the insurance companies that may perform its own investigation.  Absent arson, the determination of the cause and any attendant fault, often falls to the insurance companies, some of which are not eager to share the information they gather.  One of the residents claimed that the fire was electrical in origin, however, the fire marshal was not able to confirm that the cause was in the electrical system.  Although the home was old, the electrical system had been updated.

This is the sixth rental home fire since 2011.  Let us review these fires to see if any of them qualify as having been reported under Bellingham's current complaint-driven system that many, mostly landlords, insist is perfectly adequate.  Let us also look at the meth contaminated rental that sickened its occupants.

1404 Grant St. on 11 Jan 2011.  Fire starts in electrical junction box.  Tenants had noted problems with electrical system and alerted landlord several times.  Landlord failed to act.   No prior report to city.

Complaint-driven system FAIL.

1418 Ellis St. on 11 Jan 2011.  Fire starts when loosely connected electrical fan on apartment heater system falls to the floor and ignites carpeting.  Officials also find house rewired without permits.  Tenant unaware.  No prior report to city.

Complaint-driven system FAIL.

718 E. Maple St. on 30 Nov 2011.   Fire starts behind couch.  Possible cause is heater in proximity to combustible upholstery.  Tenants unaware. No prior report to city.

Complaint-driven system FAIL.

1208 24th St. on 1 Jan 2012.  Fire starts near baseboard heater that is fed by nearby and notoriously dangerous aluminum branch wiring.  Tenant unaware.  No prior report to city.

Complaint-driven system FAIL.

2338 Humboldt St. on 6 Mar 2013.  Electrical fire starts in attic.  Very old rental with frayed knob and tube wiring. Tenant unaware.  No prior report to city.

Complaint-driven system FAIL.


1117 Garden St. on 19 Feb 2014.  Fire, possibly electric in origin, starts inside wall near kitchen.  Tenants unaware except shortly before fire breaks out.  No prior report to the city.

Complaint-driven system FAIL.

 618 Myrtle St. on 4 Nov 1013.   Student renters become ill after moving in.  Complaints made to landlord.  No action.  Renters contact the Health Department and made to pay for inspection.  Meth contamination confirmed.  House condemned.  No prior report made to city.

Complaint-driven system PARTIAL FAIL.

As far as I can tell, Bellingham's complaint-driven system failed miserably in all of these cases.  On what basis might one defend it then?  Beats me.  Complaint- driven systems are inherently and demonstrably unable to capture the extent of the danger presented by poorly maintained and un-inspected rental housing.  Furthermore, there is no reason to hang onto the shaky remnants of such code enforcement systems and "build" upon them.  It is a waste of effort, time and money. The city's own inadequate and poorly presented statistics on the risibly few reported violations are prima facie evidence that you cannot count on the knowledge of either the tenant or the landlord when it comes to assessing the condition of a rental home.

We need a system like so many other across the country in which periodic inspections are made of all rental units.  Washington State law specifically provides for this. 

Will someone have to die in one of these rentals before we establish an effective program to inspect them?  We almost achieved that with the 24th St. fire where several were grievously injured.  Since these registration/licensing and inspection programs can easily pay for themselves from the fees gathered, whose interests are being served by not creating a robust ordinance?

The mayor and her staff will be proposing a plan and a draft ordinance in the next few days.  Pay attention to the inspection portion of what comes forward.  If that is missing or weak, we essentially continue our present complaint-driven system with its terrible consequences.