Why We Support Rental Licensing and Inspections

Renters are directly affected by rental housing, just as the patrons of restaurants are directly effected by the health and safety practices of those establishments where they choose to eat. Restaurants are regulated. Why not rentals?

As with restaurants, there are health and safety codes which rental-owners are supposed to follow. But unlike restaurants, there is no inspection to enforce those codes. With city budgets stretched thin, it is not likely that a new program of inspection will appear, unless it is able to pay for itself. Fortunately, a program that pays for itself by means of a modest fee from rental-owners is possible. But rental-owners are opposed to inspection. They claim that health and safety codes already are enforced by the complaints of renters.

According to the Centers for Disease Control in a 2008 study, “complaint-based” code enforcement (our present system) does not work because renters do not, in fact, complain. Few renters understand what is involved. Most lack the technical knowledge necessary to recognise even the most obvious violations of safety codes. Nor are renters in much of a position to complain. Enforcement of safety code violations by means of renter complaints simply does not work.

According to the CDC, without inspection, the lack of complaints means that problems with rental buildings remain obscure. Obscure problems continue to fester, and as they do, buildings become increasingly unsafe. As unsafe buildings deteriorate, neighborhoods decay. Without inspection, rental housing creates slums.

This is why we support rental licensing: without inspection, rental buildings deteriorate, and they take down the neighborhood with them as they do so. Without inspection, rentals produce slums, the CDC report says.

Fed up with slums, 80 cities of various sizes, from Boston to San Diego, have established rental licensing programs. Inspection determines whether standards of health and safety are being met. A license to rent is contingent upon meeting minimum standards. None of these programs, to our knowledge, finds a shortage of problems with rental housing. None of these programs has had to shut down because too many rentals were found, upon inspection, to be safe.

How many rental homes in Bellingham have safety code violations? Nobody knows. Given what has been found in other cities, certainly a rental licensing program is justified. Rental licensing promotes safety for thousands of tenants in both single and multi-family rental homes. It maintains stable property values, and preserves the character of neighborhoods by preservation of buildings. (Note, We are not talking about owner-occupied rentals, in which a part of the owner's home is rented. Rather, rental licensing is about off-site owners).

Licensing will not drive rental-owners out of business, although some may be required to undertake renovations. Nor will licensing disrupt the lives of renters to the degree that some fear it will do. In Pasco, Washington, after a rental inspection program was enacted, rents were found to remain stable and availability of rental housing did not decline, according to one person who is directly involved in that program. In a properly designed program, the privacy of renters will not be compromised, and the courts have upheld the right of cities to enforce the inspection of rental housing.

Licensing promotes safety, prevents the decay of rental buildings and slows the decline of neighborhoods. More than half of the homes in Bellingham are rentals. Without inspection, rentals produce slums.