Bellingham City Council tightens rules on the city’s property rental registration program
Bellingham is adding more teeth to its rental-registration ordinance as the City Council reacts to increasing tenant reports about unsafe and unlivable conditions amid sharply rising rents.
In a unanimous vote Monday night, the council ended 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.
In addition, city officials want more detailed information about rental properties that fail an initial inspection. Further, the ordinance passed Monday will allow the city to inspect all of a landlord’s rental units if a single one of them fails an inspection.
Bellingham requires registration of all rental properties and inspections on a three-year rotating schedule. The new requirements will take effect when the unit is next inspected on that cycle, Deputy City Attorney James Erb told the council in a committee meeting Monday.
Blake Lyon, director of the Planning and Community Development Department, told the council that his staff is focusing on the worst offenders.
“We’re going to be looking for those properties that are more egregious, to be able to address those in the manner that warrants the amount of attention and effort that would be necessary,” Lyon said. “We would be looking for those that have persistent concerns or that are extended across different properties and try to prioritize and triage those particular pieces rather than just, maybe, somebody that’s just failing a smoke alarm battery test or something along those lines.”
Renters squeezed
Bellingham’s move to toughen its rental registration law comes amid increasing tenant activism and rising rents in a market with a vacancy rate of less than 2% in fall 2023, according to the city. A healthy vacancy rate is 5-7%.
Some 54% of Bellingham residents are renters, according to U.S. Census data.
Further, local incomes have not kept pace with inflation. An estimated 40% of Whatcom County residents were counted among the working poor in a 2023 United Way report.
A renter must earn $29 an hour or a little more than $60,000 a year to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Whatcom County, according to the Whatcom Housing Alliance.
Failure rates
About 30% of landlords pay for a private inspection, and about 70% of landlords let the city’s Planning and Community Development Department conduct the evaluations, according to a report on the citywide registration and inspection program in April 2023.
Landlords who pay for a private assessment of their rental properties in Bellingham almost never fail the inspections.
That compares to a 15% failure rate among property owners who allow city of Bellingham officials to examine their rental units for compliance with health and safety standards.
Recently, a landlord was fined $11,000 for failing to make repairs on a rental home.
Fines against Trevor Burke of Surrey, B.C., are the largest since Bellingham city officials have taken a tougher stance on the renter registration program by increasing fees and fines and focusing on poor living conditions, Lyon said. An estimated 54% of Bellingham residents are renters, and housing prices have been steadily climbing — by an average of 17% last year, according to Herald reporting.
This story was originally published February 16, 2024 at 12:00 PM.
