BELLINGHAM, Wash. – The city’s Planning and Community Development Committee will hold a work session on Thursday, Feb. 24 from 2-3:30 p.m. at the City Council Chambers to identify and discuss residential rental property program options.
The work session falls just one week after the Mayor’s Neighborhood Advisory Commission (MNAC) meeting on Feb. 16. Following discussion about rental licensing during the meeting, the commission provided a formal recommendation to Mayor Dan Pike that he support the creation of a city ordinance to implement a rental inspection program in the city.
The recommendation was approved by the commission with a 13-5 vote with one abstention, according to Dick Conoboy. The motion read “in order to maintain a safe, healthy rental housing stock, the Mayor's Neighborhood Advisory Commission recommends that Mayor Dan Pike support the implementation of a self-supporting, effective rental housing licensing and inspection program as soon as possible in 2011.”
The commission gave a similar recommendation to the mayor almost one year ago during its March 2010 meeting when the commission approved a motion to “recommend to Mayor Dan Pike that a rental housing licensing and inspection ordinance be drawn up for review and discussion in 2010 in a public process.”
Conoboy, also known as the “zonemaven,” and a long-time advocate for a rental licensing and inspection program, said that he is unsure whether the recommendation to the mayor will greatly affect whether or not a rental licensing program is implemented.
“The mayor isn’t favorable to licensing and inspections,” Conoboy said.
Jimmy Kelsey, the MNAC representative for the Alabama Hill Neighborhood also said that he is unsure how much weight the commission carries with the mayor. Members of the commission are asked by the mayor to participate in monthly meetings and serve as two-way sources of information for each neighborhood in the city.
“We are just advisory, we have no powers,” Kelsey said.
According to Kelsey, the mayor has not taken any position on the issue.
“What he’s done is just stand aside on the issue. He hasn’t pushed it himself and he hasn’t taken action that we know of,” said Kelsey, who was one of those opposed to the recommendation. “The fact that the vote was not a unanimous one should give some pause to his decision I should hope.”
Rental licensing is not a new topic of discussion for Bellingham according to Conoboy, who himself has been working on the issue for 6 years.
In 2008 Mark Gardner, the city’s legislative policy analyst put together an in-depth report examining the options that the city had for rental housing licensing and quality inspection programs. Gardner later wrote a memo to the city council in May 2009, presenting the various options in a concise format with a table that presented six options including cost-estimates and the services provided by each program.
“It’s not that they have several options to choose from, they’ve got a whole spectrum to look at that’s pretty infinite in the possibilities,” Conoboy said. “They’re in the stage right now to see what effect certain options might have.”
Among the possible concerns is the method for storing the licensing information. Conoboy said that the council has expressed that it would like to know if the city databases could handle licensing the 17,000 rental units within the city.
As for now, Kelsey and Conoboy both said that a rental licensing program is still not close to being implemented.
“Nobody has written a proposal yet, that’s for the council to decide the next time they meet on this,” Conoboy said.
Conoboy explained that the Planning and Community Development Committee will discuss the issue, and if they decide that it is worthwhile, they would then decide when they would like the city council to consider the options for programs.
Conoboy has provided the council with copies of proposals and ordinances from other cities, like Pasco, Wash.
“There’s no reason why ours can’t look more or less the same as those other ordinances,” Conoboy said.
Wes Dyer of the Viking Community Builders, a Western Washington University club, is working with Chris Chatburn of the the Western Democrats, another student organization, to get students and community members to take a survey about the status of Bellingham’s rental units.
Dyer said that they will continue doing the survey for as long as it takes.
“There isn't really a set deadline; it's more based on the city council's status. When we feel the Council is ready or is about to fully take on rental licensing then we will be prepared to supply the survey results.”
Dyer said that the club intends to release some preliminary survey results at the council’s next meeting on Feb. 28.
When asked for a time frame of how long a rental licensing program would take to implement, Conoboy explained that it would be a long process.
“It’s not gonna happen at the next meeting. But let’s say they did, they say ‘we’re gonna have an ordinance and start inspecting.’ They’re gonna have to develop a list of landlords and send them notes saying they have to come register and pay the fee,” Conoboy said. He then said that compiling the database of licenses could take six months to a year and after that, inspections for the 17,000 rental units would take roughly two or three years just to make it through one cycle.
Aside from concerns about how long the program would take to implement are concerns about the program resulting in higher rent costs.
“Will somebody have to pay? Yeah. And it’s gonna be the renters,” Conoboy said. “But if they don’t, then the only thing is for students to live in hobbles at their own risk. It might push the city to push incentives to get more affordable housing.”
No comments:
Post a Comment