Thoams Breen Photo
150 West St.
The city’s anti-blight agency is preparing a plan to give improve how it inspects rental property and holds landlords accountable, including charging them criminally if they don’t keep their property up to code. The plan would also reward landlords that do the right thing.
That’s the upshot of more than six months of work done by the Livable City Initiative (LCI) and other stakeholders who have been working on a way to strengthen the city’s residential rental business license program and increase participation among landlords.
LCI Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo and Rafael Ramos, deputy director of housing code enforcement. presented the plan Tuesday night at a City Hall hearing of the Board of Alders Legislation Committee. But they asked that the committee hold off on a vote until more tweaks could be made to the proposed changes to the ordinance that currently governs the program.
The need to step up inspections has received more attention recently in the wake of a May 5 fire that killed two people in a rooming house at 150 West St. in the Hill. The landlord had converted the two-family home into the rooming house and escaped city inspections without obtaining a needed residential license. LCI, it turns out, is trying to keep on top of 25,000 rental units across town with only four inspectors. (Read a previous story about all that here.)
Currently, the city requires landlords to obtain a residential rental license if they live in a building and rent three or more units out. Non-owner occupied rental dwellings also require a landlord to get a license if it is a mixed-use property or if it has at least two rental units.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
LCI’s Ramos and Neal-Sanjurjo at City Hall at Tuesday night’s hearing.
Under the proposed changes, landlords would be eligible for one of three types of licenses.
To obtain a Type I license a landlord would have to have practically no defects, which would result in not having another inspection for three years. Defects could be as small as missing lights to life-threatening, like not having working smoke detectors.
Type II licenses would go to landlords whose property was found to have fewer than five defects, none of which were life-threatening. Those license holders would receive a biannual inspection.
Type III licenses would be for landlords who have more than five defects, requiring an annual inspection.
“We have a number of landlords working hard to be good, some are just getting by, and some don’t care,” Neal-Sanjuro said of the 25,000 rental units eligible for the program. “We want to get a better handle on those that don’t care and have them come up to the level that we want them to have clean, safe homes.”
The licensing program was created by a city ordinance passed in 2006. Neal-Sanjurjo said the ordinance is vague about how to run the program. Its vagueness has made it hard for LCI to apply clear fines and penalties for landlords who avoid the inspections and never obtain a license.
The amended ordinance would add language that puts fees, fines, and penalties in a table tied to the city budget. It also makes clear that any residential property found operating without a valid license from the city would be subject to enforcement action that could lead to criminal prosecution.
Ming-Yee Lin (pictured), a staff attorney with the New Haven Legal Association, was the only person who testified at the public hearing on the proposed changes. Lin had a hand in bringing the idea of a tiered licensing system to the table for the city; she got the idea from Boston.
Lin cautioned alders to keep in mind the need to balance the rigor of the program and its assorted penalties with the fact that smaller landlords could be pushed out if it is too onerous for compliance. That could endanger the city’s affordable housing stock and ongoing efforts to preserve existing housing while making sure it is safe.