In early June, the Planning Committee of the City Council will meet again in work session to review issues around possible ordinance on rental licensing and inspection. In a recent briefing before the Community Development Advisory Board, the Legislative Policy Analyst of the City Council, Mark Gardner, outlined several program features that are under review (see below.) These are based on a memo provided to the Planning Committee by Jack Weiss as it met in work session several months ago. (You can read that memo here and here.) My appreciation goes to Jack for being the first among Council members to have proposed anything approaching a rental licensing and inspection program. Yet problems with his suggestion remain.

Here are some of the program elements:

-Annual fee of $24 per unit for a rental unit license or certificate. Money would be placed in an enterprise fund to support a program to improve safety and reduce nuisances at rental properties.
-Staff would be part of existing City programs (e.g. Permit Center or Code Enforcement.) No “new bureaucracy.”

-Likely Exemptions: Small owner-occupied properties. Properties already receiving HUD inspections would be exempt from any inspection requirement.
-Program would include strengthened enforcement capacity, and initially be complaint driven.
-A basic health and safety inspection checklist will be developed from the maintenance code, not the building code.
-Properties may be allowed to self-certify compliance with the maintenance code.
-A sample of properties may be inspected proactively at some point, with a focus on properties with prior verified violations. Program specifics could be identified by the City Council this summer

These program “features” are, in part, based on some recurring misinformation and misconceptions regarding rental licensing and inspections.

That most landlords in Bellingham do a good job seems to be the mantra of those who question the need for licensing and inspections. This statement is made without reference to any empirical data. But 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. Nonetheless, the belief continues with certain members of the Council and the city management that the condition of rental housing here in Bellingham does not mirror that found in other cities. Those statistics show, time and time again, that the condition of rentals in our cities is problematic. We have, to date, from those who oppose licensing, only broad statements that are completely and utterly unsubstantiated. Moreover, there are the striking results of a recent survey of rentals in Bellingham sponsored by the student club, Viking Community Builders of WWU, which supports the data developed by other cities that have actually done inspections. You can find the survey results here at the site of Neighbors for Safe Rentals.

This is also a specious argument about enforcing current law that ignores a host of problems with respect to landlord/tenant relationships. Although the current landlord tenant law for the State of Washington spells out a list of rights and responsibilities on both sides, the enforcement mechanism for tenants is fraught with difficulties and takes time and resources, most of which tenants of modest means do not have. The law is also an “after-the-fact” statute that does nothing to prevent a landlord from renting a sub-standard unit in the first place. Current law essentially remains silent on the fact that neither the tenant nor the landlord is an expert in determining the habitability of a unit in all its aspects, i.e., electrical, plumbing, structure, mold, vermin, emergency egress, etc. (Even in larger apartment complexes, the fire inspection does not deal with the interior of the units unless a complaint is made.) Therein lies the problem with complaint-based systems. If tenants and landlords are for the large part equally ignorant of life/safety issues, on what basis can complaints be made? Last year the Washington State legislature did recognize the growing trend of municipalities passing rental licensing and inspection ordinances. The ability of jurisdictions to enact such laws is now codified in the Revised Code of Washington and provides for administrative search warrants in the event a landlord or a tenant refuses entry for inspection purposes. [Note: The previous provisions of RCW allow entry into a rental unit with 48 hours notice anyhow.] You can read the new statute here.

Some opponents of licensing rentals counter with the proposal that we inspect all homes, rentals and private residences alike, for life/safety issues. This seemingly reasonable statement wholly ignores the simple fact that a rental unit is offered to the public for a price, not so a home where the owner lives as he wishes and neglects his own property at his own risk. Rentals, on the other hand, are a form of public accommodation such as restaurants and hotels. All should be offered to the public with an assurance that they are safe areas and free of disease producing conditions. Consequently, private home kitchens are not inspected because the owner is not offering meals for a price to the public.

Mentioned in Jack Weiss’s memo is education of tenants and landlords as a possible alternative. This assumes the city will be able to sufficiently educate thousands and thousands of renters so they can discern problems with the more than 17,000 – 18,000 rental units (minus those as identified as being under another inspection regime, such as HUD.) I refer again to the statements made above regarding the difficulty of determining deficiencies in rental units. State certified building inspectors undergo substantial training to perform their duties. Do we expect we can achieve anywhere near that level of knowledge with our tenants (or our landlords for that matter) with a simple education program? Then again, how does one reach the tens of thousands of renters and the thousands of landlords to provide such knowledge? Even among the single largest bloc of renters to whom we might be able to communicate an education program, the 8,000+ students from WWU, the turnover is tremendous each year as students graduate and leave the city and thousands of freshmen move out of the dormitories to an uncertain Bellingham rental market.

Self-certification is also touted as being sufficient to ensure safe rental housing. The supposition here is again that the landlord has sufficient knowledge to determine the condition of her property. This is demonstrably not true. Cases in point are the recent fires in the York Neighborhood and the fire in the Daylight Building where, after the fire, the Fire Marshal was alerted to a lack of emergency exits in a rental unit (with five tenants) in the same building. Not only that, the fire in one of the homes in the York Neighborhood revealed the owner had subdivided the home into apartments without permitting from the city. The gas heater that caused the fire was in bad condition. The other home fire revealed electrical problems that had been reported to the management but ignored. The notion that a landlord not bring a rental to modern electrical codes is a prescription for disaster in a rental market where many tenants cram into small units and bring with them all manner of electronic gear. To ignore the current realities is folly. To blame tenants for not replacing batteries in smoke detectors is a risible notion in that these detectors are a last line of defense and NOT a remedy for basic fire safety.

Going after the bad landlords is a recurring theme in Jack Weiss’s memo and also among those who are fearful of creating a “bureaucracy.” They wish to do the minimum to get the job done which sounds like a commendable goal. The execution of that plan is the sticking point in that it assumes the city will be able to find these “bad apples” to begin with. Landlords also offer this as a solution by stating there are only a few bad landlords. If that is the case, then let the landlords and their associations bring forth a list of those “bad apples” and save the city and our citizens the time and the money to root them out. For it is surely among the landlords themselves that the “bad apples” are known. Moreover, have landlord associations even identified all the landlords in the city? While we are waiting for the landlords to act on their own, the City Council may wish to discuss the means by which the city would determine the “bad apples.” in that without inspections and with the presence of an ineffective complaint-only system, the “bad apples” will be as hidden tomorrow as they are today.

Finally, several Council members have voiced concern that the current financial climate makes a licensing program startup difficult. There is some truth to this statement, only if one is not minimally creative. In a city where $1,525,765 from the General Fund was given in 2011 to operate The Museum Department (that is, an entity that protects no lives,) to claim monies cannot be found for the mere startup of a self sustaining licensing and inspection of rentals beggars explanation. You can see the budget figures here on page 168.

It is time for rental licensing. It is time to inspect rentals. It is time to ensure the health and safety of our tens of thousands of renters. It is time for the City Council to act.