11 - Rental Property Maintenance Code

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Item No. 11 T1717 MArm, TO: Mayor & Council FROM: John Godwin, City Manager SUBJECT: RENTAL PROPERTY MAINTENANCE CODE DATE: July 6, 2018 BACKGROUND: Squalor is unsafe and unsanitary, affecting both neighbors and the overall community, and for those reasons cities have been given the legal authority to take measures to abate conditions that affect the public health and safety. It is not just the private business of the occupants of substandard structures or the owners thereof. Disease vectors spread, fire dangers can affect other properties, and none of us wants to face the loss of life of a resident of our city knowing we could have done something to prevent it, yet did not because of the opposition of a property owner making money off a dilapidated structure. In response, in 2016 the city staff worked to develop a modified International Property Management Code in an effort to provide additional tools to try to maintain minimum living standards and slow the decline of residential properties. The city council denied that recommended ordinance due to legitimate concerns, so a much smaller program was proposed in 2017. That short, local ordinance was also denied. However, in December 2017, the council gave direction to develop another, but briefer in scope, ordinance to address dilapidated residential rental properties. In response, we put together a committee of five local property owners to give us feedback and to try to ensure our ultimate recommendations were logical and practical in the real world. The committee met three times, and we also communicated with them by email and phone. We had one committee meeting that turned into a public meeting due to some inaccurate information that spread, and then a formal presentation with the public was made on June 19. As a result of the feedback we received at that meeting, we made a number of changes prior to the city attorney drafting actual ordinance language. These included adding a 7 -day compliance period; including duplexes, triplexes, boarding houses and similar properties under the ordinance requirements; providing an appeal process; clarifying it is not a violation of the water and sewer requirement if service has been turned off because a tenant did not pay his/her bill; and requiring an occupant of a rental property to give the owner reasonable notice of a violation prior to an order being issued by the city.