Commerce City rental proposal raises questions
Our City Council is considering a new policy to register rental properties — like a similar law that’s on the books next door in Denver. It’s intended to hold landlords more accountable, but it also stands to backfire on the housing market in our community if it isn’t at least fine-tuned.
A former City Council member — Rene’ Bullock, who now heads the Commerce City Chamber of Commerce and is running for mayor — brought the issue to the public’s attention in an opinion piece he wrote for Wednesday’s Denver Gazette. Bullock maintains that the proposed ordinance, called Rental Registration Ordinance 2541, “was designed initially to target multi-family housing but in practice will increase rental home prices and create onerous burdens for property owners of single-family rental homes.” He argues the ordinance as drafted will, “lead to costs that will be passed on to tenants who will be forced to pay higher rent.”
The last thing any community in the metro area needs is even higher housing costs. We have some thoughts of our own about how to make the measure more realistic. We hope the current council considers some input before proceeding with the policy, so here’s some food for thought:
Any inspections required by the policy should be for looking into issues raised by a tenant’s complaint about a specific property and landlord. It shouldn’t be a blanket requirement just to get a license, which would drive up the price of rentals for all tenants.
Under the proposal as it now stands, if a single unit in an apartment complex fails inspection, the city will have the ability to prevent all the units from being leased. That is turning a small and identifiable problem into a massive potential loss of housing.
Meanwhile, does Commerce City even have the problems the policy seeks to address? If the City’s housing challenges were low-quality housing and too many people renting out their properties, then it might make for a reasonable policy discussion. But Colorado’s tight housing market nowadays presents the opposite challenge — the need for more rentals. Commerce City doesn’t have enough rental units to keep up with demand. New licensing regulations and required inspections work against this challenge. If anything, we should be making it easier for one person to rent housing to another.
The state’s real estate brokerage licensing requirements also address the issue already. Those requirements cover leasing property, not just selling property. And Minimal housing quality is adequately handled by the state’s Warranty of Habitability Real Estate statute, §38-12-40, which covers every type of maintenance dispute, not just issues that render the unit uninhabitable.
Meanwhile, the tenants themselves in rental units are likely to object to inspectors knocking on their doors and roaming through their homes.
Another problem: The proposed ordinance doesn’t make an exception for damage that an inspection mind find — but that was caused by the tenant. What’s more, inspections can be the first to uncover tenant misuse or neglect, prompting the landlord to take action against the resident.
Let’s rethink this, council members!