Thomas Breen photo
LCI Deputy Rafael Ramos.
A plan to revamp the city’s residential licensing program to better target repeat-offending slumlords earned a key city sign-off, as well as words of caution about how tighter regulations are effective only alongside increased enforcement.
That approval and warning came Monday night during a special meeting of the City Plan Commission in the City Plan department’s fifth floor library at City Hall.
The commissioners voted unanimously in favor of an amendment proposed by the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI) leadership to the ordinance that governs the Residential Rental Business License Program. Those changes now go to the full Board of Alders for a final vote.
The 13-year-old program, which requires landlords of non-owner occupied buildings to purchase a license and submit to regular city inspections, has drawn heightened public scrutiny since a fire at an illegal rooming house in the Hill killed two tenants and displaced 14.
Monday night’s City Plan Commission meeting.
Rafael Ramos, LCI’s deputy director of housing code enforcement, walked the commissioners through the proposed changes much as he did to the Board of Alders Legislation Committee several weeks ago.
“We are looking to amend the license program,” he said, “to better protect the health safety and welfare of people who rent and the general public.”
Some of the key proposed changes to the program’s regulations include:
• Creating a three-tiered system whereby landlords whose properties present the most serious, life-threatening housing code violations, such as defunct smoke detectors, no lights in the hallway, and persistent rodent infestations, must register and be inspected on an annual basis. Landlords with properties in good standing must only register and be inspected every three years.
• Removing the $1,000 maximum registration fee for buildings with over 25 rental apartments. If the changes go into place, all landlords in the program will have to pay a unit-based registration fee of $200 for the first two rental units and $50 for every unit after that.
• Clarifying that residential licenses can be applied for and purchased online through the city’s website.
LCI Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
“For the last two years now we’ve been looking to revamp our residential licensing program,” LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo said. “The original ordinance had some need. We needed it bolstered.” While the program has grown significantly in the past few years, she said, the department still only has four inspectors trying to keep up with 25,000 eligible apartments in the city.
Ed Mattison, the City Plan Commission’s chair and a former alder and legal aid lawyer, said he has spoken with employees for some of the city’s largest private landlords. “They’re very dismissive of the city’s efforts,” he said. They refuse to participate in the residential licensing program, he said, and their attitude is: “If the city wants to make them do it, then let them try.”
City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison.
Mattison said that, in addition to updating and clarifying the program’s regulations, LCI should also put pressure on corporation counsel to “put this high enough on their agenda that it becomes too dangerous to ignore.
“You really have to have a concentrated effort by everybody involved, or its just not going to worked. Because [many landlords] just think they can outwait you.”
Neal-Sanjurjo said that LCI, the fire department, the building department, the health department, and the housing authority are all meeting on a regular basis to rethink housing code regulations, inspections, and enforcement.
Ramos added that many lawyers outside City Hall are paying closer and closer attention to housing code laws. Hopefully, he said, a lawyer will take a housing code case to court and win a precedent-setting recognition from the judge that further legitimizes the residential licensing program.
“The ordinance does say that it is illegal to rent without a residential license,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time until it goes across the street and a judge says, ‘They’re right. City ordinance says it’s illegal.’ This will give it more teeth.”
The article mentions paying for the license online through the city's website. If so, the website needs to be better set up to locate various city offices and information.
This week I had to go downtown to get information from both the Clerk's Office (Election record for 2019) and the Registrar of Voters (list of registered voters). The staffers were more than helpful, but initially I was told I had to fill out a paper request form and then submit it, presumably to return a 2nd time to retrieve the information.<br /> Q.: why can't all this information be online 24/7? If it exists, why isn't it in a database available to the public.<br /> Before you add more functions to the website, check with city hall staffers to see what the public telling them works or doesn't work.<br /> Q: How does the public locate Requests for Proposals for jobs?