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Update: Bellingham Landlord Licensing
The Bellingham City Council meets on Monday, December 7th, to discuss the proposal of licensing rental-unit owners. I blogged about it earlier in the week HERE after learning about it from the Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound.
Yesterday, the Whatcom County Assoc. of Realtors Political Action Center, led by Perry Eskridge, sent an e-mail to Realtors with more facts and a list of hard questions for the Council as they consider this proposal.
The following are excerpted from Perry’s e-mail to the Realtors:
There is a single document that will form the basis for the Council’s discussions. It is a 2008 whitepaper drafted by the Council’s Legislative Analyst, Mark Gardner. You will find the paper here (27 pages).
When you read through the paper, there are several items of note. First, I am surprised that there seems to be a lack of discussion concerning the problems in Bellingham. I am aware that there are the college party houses, but there are no statistics concerning the breadth of the problem. Are there 10 houses or 100 houses. The costs, and hence the need, for a solution begins to dwindle substantially when the number of problems is small.
Second, there is a large portion of the report dedicated to Western Washington University populations. The report provides that 30% of students live on the campus, meaning that 70% live elsewhere. However, there is no discussion of whether these are primarily non-traditional students living with families or other situations where dorms are not appropriate, there is no discussion of the impact rising tuition will have on this situation, etc. In short, the analysis is not very complete if WWU “overcrowding” is really the issue.
Next, I was struck by the lack of concern for similar issues found in owner-occupied housing in single family neighborhoods. If any of you have visited the REALTOR® office on Northwest Avenue, you know something of what I mean. Our neighbor to the South has such clutter that your staff are constantly finding vermin in our parking lot (5 dead rats last week alone), there are four vehicles parked on the lawn, two dogs, a couple cats, and so much “junk” around the yard that it defies explanation. This whole regulatory scheme would do nothing to solve the problem that is in our backyard, literally.
There is also the issue of other laws, already enacted, that allow tenants or others to monitor the quality of rental housing. There is no real discussion of the Washington Landlord-Tenant Act, the City of Bellingham nuisance ordinances, the building codes, etc. The Council had urged staff to review these existing regulatory issues but the proposal contains no such discussion. Furthermore, there is no consideration that the City stated it would have a meeting with interested individuals prior to taking any action, however, that has not happened either.
Finally, there are the fees. The paper, which is only a proposal, suggests that the City would add almost $456,000 if the city charged $35 for a single-family residence rental and $30/unit for all other rental housing. What is missing is any discussion about the expenses for the 3-4 inspectors that would be necessary to conduct the inspections that would be mandated or for the costs of prosecution of violations that are discovered during the inspection process. Knowing what the expenses are for 3-4 city employees, that $456,000 is not going to go very far if, indeed, it covers the expenses of such a program at all. What is really curious is that this large, new regulatory program comes after the budget discussion and public hearing.
The Committee of the Whole is scheduled to meet at 2:20p.m. in the Bellingham City Council chambers, 2nd floor of Bellingham City Hall, 210 Lottie Street, Bellingham. Perry also explained:
…that this is a committee meeting, so there is no formal requirement that the Council take public testimony. It is not unusual, however, that if a large number of the public arrives for a council meeting, that the chair will let some people, usually representatives of larger groups, speak. In any event, it is a good opportunity to be present and see where the council’s intention is focused.
