Bellingham tenant advocates: City’s rental registration program changes ‘missed the mark’
Bellingham tenant advocates say recent changes made to the city’s property rental registration program are “too little, too late,” with still no fair penalties for code violations.
The city council voted unanimously in February to end the practice of allowing “declarations of compliance” and now will require actual inspections of rental properties for habitability — either by a city employee or a private inspector, as allowed by state law.
City officials said they wanted more detailed information about rental properties that fail an initial inspection. The new ordinance is also meant to allow the city to inspect all of a landlord’s rental units if a single one of them fails an inspection.
Tenant advocates say that these changes are not enough to improve the habitability issues in Bellingham’s rental properties.
“It feels like they just missed the mark completely,” said Bellingham renter Aidan Hersh, whose home was recently found to have dozens of code violations after it was inspected by the city.
A citywide report last year on the registration and inspection program showed private inspections of rental properties paid for by landlords almost never fail, calling into question the legitimacy of private inspections.
That’s compared to a 15% failure rate among property owners who allow city of Bellingham inspectors to examine their rental units for compliance with health and safety standards. Discussing the report last year, city councilmembers acknowledged “holes” in the rental inspection program and the need to “hold landlords accountable.”
City council members voted in October to double the fees for landlords to register their rental properties and increase fines for failing a required inspection.
Still, tenant advocates say the rental inspection system needs a complete overhaul for the new ordinance to make any difference.
“The (rental registration program) has been such a failure for the past eight years,” said Rebecca Quirke of the local advocacy group Tenants Revolt. “(The city) needs to get with the times. This needs to be completely redone.”
“The fact of the matter is there’s a lack of failed inspections from private inspections. So for the city to pass an ordinance to say, ‘We need to scrutinize those failed inspections from private inspectors,’ that is the complete opposite of what should be done,” Hersh told The Bellingham Herald.
Tenant advocates say the new ordinance also does nothing to hold landlords and property managers accountable.
“There’s no actual punishment for committing crimes,” Hersh said. “In Bellingham, we still encourage compliance. That’s the main theme of the ordinance. Nothing substantial has changed. It’s all still encouragement. It’s incentivization. That’s not what we are after.”
Former Bellingham city councilmember and renter Kristina Michele Martens partnered with Tenants Revolt late last year to draft an ordinance that proposed to revoke city-issued rental registration certificates from landlords who fail an inspection. The ordinance also proposed a $10,000 for landlords found to be managing an uninhabitable property.
The ordinance was ultimately unsuccessful.
“I’m worried that until something absolutely horrific happens and we lose lives that we can directly tie to faulty wiring, to no heat in the house, to mold toxicity — it’s just going to be the cycle, and the powers that be will not take it seriously. They’re not renters,” Martens told The Herald.
Bellingham tenant advocates argue that many rules can be implemented to better hold landlords accountable:
▪ Establishing a city tenant protections department.
▪ Issuing immediate fines for code violations.
▪ Issuing criminal charges for ongoing and unaddressed habitability issues.
▪ Criminalizing the collection of rent from tenants in homes with code violations.
▪ Implementing rent stabilization regulation.
▪ Issuing penalties for vacant properties.
▪ Initiating civil asset forfeiture for delinquent property owners.
This story was originally published March 10, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
