City Council takes steps to protect low-income renters
13th March 2017 · 0 Comments
By Della Hasselle
Contributing Writer
Shawanda Holmes knows about substandard housing in New Orleans. As recently as June, she was renting out a home with a gaping hole in the wall, big enough that her 14-year-old once fell through it.
The place she rented before wasn’t any better, she said. That’s where her two youngest children contracted lead poisoning. The kids, both under the age of eight, still have to get their blood tested once a month to monitor lead levels flowing through their tiny systems.
“I actually tried to commit suicide, the first home [was] so depressing,” Holmes recently told New Orleans City Council’s Community Development Committee, choking on tears. “That’s how depressed I was.”
Holmes was among dozens of residents who spoke before members of City Council back in January about “unlivable” rentals permeating the city’s market. Many were there to support a proposed law that would require homes be registered and regularly inspected for basic living conditions before they can legally be rented out.
Stories of ceilings caving in, homes without electricity, rodent infestations and raw sewage running through apartments were effective. After three and a half hours of impassioned testimony, the committee voted 4-0 to advance the proposal to the full City Council.
That’s despite outspoken opposition from several landlords and even affordable housing advocates. Many described the proposal as a possibly unconstitutional enforcement that would unfairly punish complying landlords with extraneous fees, and ultimately harm the very tenants the council intended to protect by driving up rates of New Orleans rentals overall.
“Some bad actors, no matter how many fines and liens, will not do the right thing,” said Neil Morris, with the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance. “It’s using a sledge hammer to fix the wrist watch.”
The January hearing wasn’t the first time the notion of rental registries had been floated for New Orleans. The council for years had entertained the idea as a means to protect the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents from slum conditions and neglectful landlords.
Fair housing advocates say a large number of tenants are in dire need of some sort of protection. According to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, about three-fourths of the apartments and houses on the private market rental need some kind of repair or upgrade.
The violations range from non-working smoke alarms and smaller leaks to toxic mold and rat infestations. And the problem is significant, advocates say, as more than half of residents in the Crescent City live in rented homes, and about 40 percent spend more than half their income on rent, with little to no extra money for home repair.
According to City Councilman Jason Williams, who along with Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell authored the “Healthy Homes Ordinance,” the proposed law requires landlords meet “minimal standards of rentability.” The “low but necessary bar,” Williams said, includes hot and cold running water, working plumbing and electricity, proper windows, doors and a roof.
“The things everyone needs in a home,” Williams said.
As proposed, the law would require landlords to begin registering their rentals, names and personal addresses in a publicly accessible database by Jan.1, 2018. All properties with 10 or more units would be required to register by March 31, 2018. Landlords of properties with five to nine units would have to sign up by Aug. 31, 2018, and those with one to four units by Dec. 31, 2018.
The ordinance proposes landlords pay an initial $60 registration fee and $40 for annual renewals.
Inspection costs would vary between $30 and $50 per unit, with anywhere from 100 percent to 15 percent of units requiring the service, depending on the number of units within the property. Owners would get two weeks’ notice and would be required to be present. Properties that pass a first inspection wouldn’t have to be inspected for another three years.
Under the proposed law, tenants can’t live in a unit that doesn’t have a certificate indicating that it passed inspection. For the property owner, punishments for failing the inspection range from paying fines to losing the ability to rent the property.
Council members have proposed a fund to help renters who would be forced to move if their home was to fail inspections, and give the home owner money so landlords could help make the property inhabitable.
According to Cantrell, the plan would be an improvement from hoops tenants must jump through now to contest unfair housing practices. As of now, residents can call the city’s code enforcement by dialing 3-11, but many say that they risk eviction through that process, because the attention only upsets their landlords.
Others try litigation as a way of forcing landlords to fix rundown and unsafe properties. Sharika Evans, another renter, testified that she had previously sought help from an organization called Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, which provides assistance to low-income residents.
According to the director, Laura Tuggle, however, the program is overwhelmed: in 2016, a single attorney oversaw 151 rental habitability cases after tenants complained of mold, poor plumbing, rodents and lack of electricity.
Often, Tuggle said, the legal process was a tedious, arduous and expensive way to get justice for those clients.
“People are looking for a swift solution to an urgent crisis,” Tuggle said.
While many landlords resisted the idea of added fees and frequent property inspections, some were open to the idea. Among them were Roux Merlo, who is also a member of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, and Victor Pizzaro, a landlord in Gentilly.
“I think it’s a very small price to pay as a landlord, and a very small routine process to go through, similar to a brake tag check,” Pizzaro said about the notion of a rental registry. “To make sure the working class of New Orleans have safe and healthy living conditions… it’s not that complex.”
However, several questions so far remain unanswered. Among them is how exactly City Council would enforce the rule against landlords who failed inspections multiple times.
The question of constitutionality was also raised, with several opponents stating that the proposal violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from government search and seizure of private residences.
“Anything other than voluntary inspection is a violation,” said Bart Gillis, a real estate agent and landlord. “Rental registries around the country have been struck down.”
Although the committee voted to move the proposal forward, several council members remained openly skeptical of the plan as written. Councilwoman Stacy Head, in particular, took issue with the strict liability standard for landlords as outlined in the ordinance, which she said “frightens” her as an attorney, and with the lack of plan to help people who may be evicted simply because a landlord doesn’t meet certain standards.
The committee agreed to discuss changes to the ordinance before bringing it to a final vote.
“There are two sides to this and hopefully there’s some way to meet in the middle,” Councilwoman Susan Guidry said.
“It upsets me when y’all say you want to charge an extra fee for my place to be inspected.” One homeowner, Kevin Zeno told the committee members. “You all shouldn’t punish me, a good landlord.”
This article originally published in the March 13, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
