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LCI on the job on Shelton Avenue.
A plan to require limited-liability-company landlords to provide the city with the name and contact information for an actual, live, flesh-and-blood human being — and not just corporate names stacked on top of one another — won a preliminary vote, as the city strives to make it easier to get a hold of property owners during maintenance emergencies.
That was the outcome of Tuesday night’s latest regular monthly meeting of the Board of Alders Legislation Committee. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom, and was the first aldermanic committee meeting of the new two-year legislative term.
Following up on the City Plan Commission’s favorable recommendation of this same item in December, the committee alders voted unanimously Tuesday in support of a proposed amendment to Article XIV, Section 17 – 74 of the city’s code of ordinances.
At the center of the proposed amendment is a requirement that landlords who register their multi-family rental properties with the city through the residential rental licensing program provide an actual — or “natural” — person’s name and contact information.
The proposal defines“natural person” as“a living human being, not less than eighteen years of age. Natural person does not include any legal entity or other legal fiction ordinarily granted the status of person under Connecticut State Law.”
The ordinance amendment now advances to the full Board of Alders for further review and a potential final vote. Click here to read the proposed amendment in full.
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LCI chief Arlevia Samuel.
Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Arlevia Samuel told the alders that the purpose of this proposed law update is to ensure that her city agency doesn’t have to first wade through “different numbers, voice machines, messages, going on and on” when trying to contact a landlord about an emergency at their property.
It should also make it easier for the city to follow up with landlords when looking to collect a lien resulting from, say, persistent housing code violations.
LCI Acting Deputy Director Mark Wilson referred back to this weekend’s snowstorm as a perfect example of when the “natural person” requirement would come in handy.
LCI had to respond to “quite a few emergencies” during the storm, Wilson reported. “Trying to locate a physical or natural person at two in the morning when you don’t have any contact information is very difficult.”
Many times, he said, a landlord registered as a limited liability company (LLC) will list another LLC as its agent. “That LLC will list as its agent another LLC,” Wilson said. “This can go on and on. It can become very time consuming for our staff to dig and dig to find an actual person.”
To have the name and phone number of an actual, “natural” person with some level of decision-making power at the landlord company “would help LCI out tremendously,” Wilson said.
Downtown Alder Eli Sabin noted that, according to the text of the ordinance amendment itself, LCI had 1,999 properties registered to its residential rental licensing program last year, and it completed 1,042 inspections.
“What’s the gap between those numbers?” Sabin asked. And will this “natural person” law update help LCI close that gap in any way?
“A large part of that is because of Covid,” Samuel replied, and not so much because of LCI’s inability to get in touch with a landlord. “People not wanting us to come into the units. That was a bigger part of the gap.”
Are there any other landlord-contact issues that alders should be thinking about? Sabin asked. Any other problems LCI has run into in getting in touch with property owners that might be addressed with future legislation?
Samuel said that recently she has begun meeting independently with the heads of some of the largest property owners in town, “trying to formulate a better relationship with them.” She said those meetings have focused on both city expectations of landlords, and on how the city can “help them to be more effective.”
“So far, it seems like it’s going to be a good thing,” she said about these one-on-one, LCI-landlord meet ups. “That’s going to improve our operations as well.”
Looking For A ... Maintenance Man? Managing Partner? Someone Else?
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Legislation Committee Chair Decker.
East Rock Alder and Legislation Committee Chair Charles Decker asked about whom exactly LCI is looking to get the contact information for through this “natural person” law.
A managing partner of a LLC? The main person in charge of a corporate property management company? A property manager, or point-person maintenance worker? “How are you conceptualizing that?”
“We need a responsible individual that we can communicate with who can make decisions, who has money, who can get in the units, who can assist us, who can assist the residents, who can make repairs on a whim,” Samuel said.
The city is not necessarily looking to have the contact information for the person at the very top of the business, she said. But LCI does want and need to be able to easily reach someone who has decision-making power, money, ready access to the units, and the ability to get repairs done.
She added that her office is updating the residential licensing program application form going forward to add lines for property managers and maintenance managers.
But that doesn’t mean that’s the only type of person the city needs to be able to get in touch with quickly, Wilson said.
“Having a maintenance man, it helps. We need someone who can also make a decision in regards to relocating someone, which requires some financial background. … We need someone who has a little bit of juice, who can make a decision like that.”
If this ordinance amendment passes, Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison asked, “What is your plan of action in regards to gathering the information? What kind of timeline are we walking?”
Samuel said that her agency right now is looking to “scrub the whole system” — that is, go through every single registered entity in the city’s residential licensing program and make sure that LCI has accurate, up-to-date contact information for each property owner.
When participating landlords renew their applications over the next one to three years, she said, LCI will be asking at that time of renewal for “natural person” contact info. (The residential licensing program is structured in such a way that registered properties with the most housing code violations get inspected once a year, while those with the least get inspected once every three years.)
So that means that LCI won’t have actual, clean, up-to-date contact info for every property owner in the program until 2024 or 2025? Morrison asked.
“I know it seems like a long time,” Samuel replied. She said that, at the same time that LCI is processing new and renewed residential licensing applications, her agency is also working on a new “marketing and social media plan to put us more in the public eye.” Hopefully that publicity push will get property owners to reach out directly to the city, and not just the other way around, with up-to-date “natural person” contact info.
At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Westville Alder Adam Marchand urged his legislative colleagues to vote in support.
“I think the goal of this ordinance is really important,” he said. “We want landlords to be reachable so they can be held accountable for problems that arise at their properties. …
“I strongly support this attempt to close some loopholes that have proved very frustrating for enforcement efforts” by LCI.
Morrison agreed. “If you own a home, you are responsible for that home and the people in that home,” she said. This “natural person” law represents “yet another tool for the enforcement toolbelt” to ensure that LCI can quickly and easily get in touch with landlords.
Decker recognized that looking up who is behind a LLC is certainly possible now, though, depending on the state and the corporate structure of any given company, it can take quite a bit of effort to trace ownership.
“Being able to close a loophole by making it much easier and allowing our staff to focus their valuable time and energy on other things they need to do in order to make the stock of affordable housing in our city actually livable seems like a worthwhile thing to do,” he said.