Rental Inspection Program

At this morning’s meeting with the city budget director some more information on Milwaukee’s proposed ordinance requiring the mandatory inspection of rental units was provided.

First, the proposed ordinance is in the final stages of drafting and will be released in the near future.

Second, it will be a 5 year pilot program in the UWM area only.

Third, there will be a fee of $40 per landlord and a $35 per unit inspection fee.

Fourth, the pilot program must be approved by the city’s common council each and every year in order for it to continue.

Fifth, if a rental unit passes its 1st inspection then the unit will receive a 4 year compliance certificate and will not need to be reinspected until the 4 years expires.

Here is a handout/pamphlet that was circulating on the east side of Milwaukee last week that focuses on some of the issues that tenants should be concerned about regarding Milwaukee’s proposed ordinance for mandatory rental unit inspections.

There Are Better Ways To Spend Milwaukee’s Limited Money

The city of Milwaukee has no money and as such the city is threatening to close libraries, not hire additional police officers, not pay overtime to police officers, cut back on the number of firemen assigned to each ladder company.  Under this new ordinance the city will spend money which would be better spent on more police officers and other safety issues rather than hiring more building inspectors.

Tenant’s Right to Privacy

Under this new ordinance rental properties would be subject to search by building inspectors.  Tenants will have building inspectors walking through their apartments and looking at everything.  This is unnecessary and intrusive.  It should be the tenant’s decision to call the inspector if the landlord has failed to make a repair.  Tenants’ right to privacy in their own home is a basic American right. (more…)

“Would Cause More Problems Than It Would Solve”

A very detailed feasibility study of Rental Unit Licensing was prepared for the City of Milwaukee by the LaFollette Institute in 2003.  It’s conclusions:

The City of Milwaukee should not create a rental unit licensing program because it would not be an effective regulatory or revenue mechanism. We take this position based on the projected high administrative costs, political opposition, possible effects on low-income housing, and uncertain benefits.

The study found that both property owners and tenants would be adversely affected by rental licensing:

Our analysis finds that rental unit licensing has very uncertain benefits and can create negative effects on housing markets and the availability of affordable housing. Those negative effects would be likely to occur were rental unit licensing implemented in Milwaukee. We conclude that Milwaukee should not implement licensing because the policy would be expensive, meet strong political opposition, and cause more problems for Milwaukee’s rental markets than it would solve.

Link to full study

The city of Milwaukee is planning on introducing a new ordinance that will require rental property owners in certain parts of the city to license their rental properties and submit to mandatory interior inspections by the Department of Neighborhood Services (DNS).

Many of the AASEW board members have been having regular monthly meetings with the new DNS Commissioner Art Dahlberg.  During a recent meeting Mr. Dahlberg informed us that in the near future he will be pushing for some form of residential rental inspection program (a.k.a “Landlord Licensing”) for portions of the city.  During a meeting with Alderman Bob Donovan it was confirmed that this program was in the works and that the city’s forthcoming budget already has money earmarked for the program.

Under this program DNS would target certain areas of the city which they consider to be “blighted” or which will soon become “blighted” if something is not done.  Other factors that would be considered in determining what areas to target would be the age of the housing stock, the percentage of rental units to owner occupied properties, and the history of complaints in the neighborhood.  Mr. Dahlberg indicated that the area of the city that would most likely be addressed first would be the east side near UWM due to the large number of illegally converted dwelling units and poorly maintained properties.

The goal of the program would allegedly be for the owners and the city building inspectors to work together to better the rental housing stock with the building inspectors becoming a resource for rental property owners.

While the specific details were not provided to me, any proposed program will most certainly contain provisions such as the following:

-  A requirement that all rental property owners in the targeted area pay a fee to the city for each unit that they own. 

-  A requirement that rental property owners allow the city building inspectors to conduct mandatory inspections of the interiors of each of their rental properties that are located within the targeted area.

-  If no code violations are found then the rental property would receive a certificate of code compliance which would allow the owner to rent out the unit for a period of time until the next mandatory interior inspection would be required.

-  If code violations were to be found in the rental property then the owner would be denied a certificate of code compliance (thus preventing the unit from being rented) until the violations were corrected.  Depending on the the number and severity of the violations, the rental property owner would be required to submit to an increased number of interior inspections during the ensuing months until the city would determine that the rental property was safe.

While this new program would only focus on the UWM area initially, other areas of town were also mentioned (the north side of Milwaukee for instance) as being targeted eventually.  It is fairly obvious that the end goal would be to have all rental properties within the city under this program.