Inspection plan gets more debate
By Joey Berlin
Originally published 01:26 p.m., November 20, 2007
Updated 01:26 p.m., November 20, 2007
The discussion was lively Monday night before the Emporia City Commission’s meeting with the Emporia Human Relations Commission even began, with a few early attendees debating the HRC’s recent rental inspection proposal. Once the meeting at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church began, commissioners and the public still had plenty to say.
Renters stood up to defend the reputations of Emporia landlords. A woman talked about an extended, ongoing battle just to get her landlord to fix her furnace. The city commission, the HRC and the public listened as City Commissioner Jeff Longbine outlined the rental inspection policies of the city of Los Angeles.
Ultimately, Longbine said afterward, the two-hour, 20-minute meeting did reach a consensus: Whether the city actually adopts an entirely new system, city commissioners do need to look at and upgrade existing city codes.
“Maybe we revamp the system, maybe we do it with different personnel,” Longbine said.
The meeting touched on several different facets of the housing issue, from controversial proposed inspection fees for landlords, to holding both landlords and tenants accountable, to eliminating the bureaucracy of having a number of different offices for tenants to pursue complaints depending on the type of complaint.
The HRC began the meeting by attempting to answer some questions about the research it had done in coming up with its proposal. It listed the cities used as reference points in its research, including Lawrence, Salina and Topeka, and cities in other states, such as New Haven, Conn., Des Moines, Iowa, and Hopkins, Minn.
Several of the public comments came from landlords determined not to get lumped in with a few alleged slum lords. One renter, Alan Scott, touched on statistics used by the HRC in listing landlord complaints in Emporia. He said one landlord had generated 11 complaints in 2006 and four so far in 2007.
“I just wanted to point out that there’s a couple people that’s causing a lot of problems,” Scott said.
After the city commission and the HRC further discussed the matter, the conversation turned to a workshop Longbine and City Manager Matt Zimmerman attended last week in New Orleans at the annual Congress of Cities & Exposition. The workshop focused on the rental inspection system being used in the city of Los Angeles.
Longbine delivered a summary of the L.A. program, first telling the HRC, “There are a tremendous amount of similarities between their program and the program you guys have worked so hard to design.”
Renters in L.A. are charged an inspection fee per person per month, Longbine said, a fee that has gradually been increased from $1. He said landlords in L.A. have watched property values increase, and the city has seen less crime and blight.
Longbine listed several key differences between L.A.’s system and the HRC proposal. The Los Angeles system requires that inspection fees be passed on to the tenant on a monthly basis — thus, the fees don’t cost landlords anything unless they are cited. Also, in L.A., once a rental inspector detects a deficiency, the next step is to determine who is at fault, the landlord or the tenant. Either one can be cited and fined. The L.A. system also includes different punishments and requirements based on the severity of the deficiencies.
“I found that it was, in the presentation we got, a very fair program to both the landlords and the tenants,” Longbine said.
Longbine proposed taking the first and second quarters of 2008 to evaluate existing codes and formulate appropriate ordinances, including the possible development of a one-stop housing office that would handle all housing-related complaints.
“And that would also give us time to develop the budget considerations for funding that while we’re debating the ’09 budget,” he said afterward, “which we would do late second quarter, start of the third quarter.”
Commissioner Jim Kessler said during the meeting he thought the HRC’s proposal was a good starting point for discussing change, but he was “leaning more towards what we have.” He said existing city codes weren’t being enforced.
“In fact, not only is it not being enforced,” he said, “it’s a bureaucratic nightmare, and there’s a lot of buck-passing” with regard to the many different offices that handle rental complaints.
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