Columbia’s latest try at landlord oversight draws wider support

The city of Columbia’s attempt to control absentee or uncooperative landlords has taken a turn toward moderating last year’s proposal that enraged property owners and managers.

The newest version of the proposal gives landlords more leeway before they face being put out of business, creates a penalty system that adjusts for the severity of property maintenance violations and makes it easier for property managers to get mandatory, annual, $25 rental permits for each apartment.

A key provision is that all landlords would be required to provide city housing officials with their addresses and phone numbers, creating a database so the Columbia Police Department would know where all rental properties are and who owns them.

“We’re going to take inventory better of who has what and where it is,” said police Chief Skip Holbrook, whose department took over codes enforcement during the summer of 2014.

Absentee landlords have been required to register with the city since 2009. But roughly half of an estimated 3,000 of them have not complied, city officials said.

The new law would increase landlords’ accountability for structural problems with rental units and allow city codes enforcers to contact them more easily about the behavior of their tenants.

Problem tenants themselves will continue to be issued tickets by code enforcers who will haul them into city court as criminal violators.

A State newspaper sampling of stakeholders who will be affected by the new law indicates the changes have won support. If City Council adopts the updated proposal, it would take effect July 1.

Members of a coalition of some 20 neighborhoods were persuaded after a Feb. 12 meeting with the police department’s lawyer, Mike Hemlepp, to review the changes.

“Most of the people left that meeting thinking that, ‘Yes, there are some things we don’t like,’ ” said April Lucas, who lives in the University Hill neighborhood. “ ‘But let’s not let the perfect stand in the way of the good.’ ”

Stakeholders won compromises

The police department began a year ago working on a rewrite of the city’s landlord ordinance about the time that a group of neighborhood activists had been putting together its own plans for dealing with both misbehaving college students who had invaded residential areas and landlords who had let houses become dilapidated.

“We want to be minimally invasive to people who are cooperating with us,” said Hemlepp, the primary author of the proposed changes in the city’s 6-year-old absentee landlord rules. “It actually will be easier to enforce the law.”

Holbrook said he has gotten a lot of complaints about unkempt houses and rowdy tenants from neighbors, particularly those who live near the city’s colleges and universities.

Once he looked into the issue, he learned “there was a lack of teeth in our code enforcement, and cases seemed not to be resolved.”

The newest version of the proposal, initially released in December, is to be presented to members of a City Council committee Monday at City Hall. Councilman Sam Davis, who chairs the Economic and Community Development Committee, said he supports the updated proposal.

Hemlepp said he made changes in the draft law after meetings with a range of stakeholders that included property managers, neighborhood groups, real estate agents and tenants.

Residents remained resolute about taking back their neighborhoods; landlords thought the early version of the plan would put them out of business too quickly if their tenants misbehaved.

The chief, Hemlepp and David Hatcher, the head of the unit that has 12 code enforcers, studied best practices in other cities. The police department looked toward writing a law that took account of their hotly contested but often different concerns.

“We see the big picture that nobody else in the city sees because we’re the ones to enforce it,” Hemlepp said.

Key changes

The major changes in the proposal include:

▪  Landlords will not face loss of their rental permits until any individual apartment accumulates 15 codes violation points in a year instead of six. The first five points no longer carry financial penalties.

The number of points will be weighted so that repeat offenders — or property violations that pose threats of serious injury or death — are docked more points per offense. A serious offense carries a 10-point penalty.

Points would not accumulate for major property repairs if the landlord signs an agreement to fix the problem by a deadline.

▪  Points assessed against apartments will be suspended then dropped altogether if landlords start and complete evictions of problem tenants.

▪ An apartment’s rental permit would be revoked for six months after an administrative procedure that includes an appeals process if that apartment is accessed 15 points.

▪  Property managers who are responsible for many apartments will have to get rental permits, but they may vouch for the condition of their properties without providing detailed inventories or submit to an inspection.

▪  Large apartment complexes would no longer face points as an entity. But they would be subject to being deemed by police to be public nuisances. Declaring a location a public nuisance is not quick and requires several administrative steps.

▪  Apartments no longer will be required to post decals showing they have permits.

Fines to remain as proposed

Unchanged from the earlier version of the proposal are:

▪  Fines remain at $100 for each point assessed. But now the fines start with the sixth offense.

▪  Failure to get a rental permit would carry a $400 per year fine.

▪  Properties that fail a second inspection after a violation would be subject to a $50 re-inspection fee.

▪  Two points would be assessed if it is determined a landlord is found to have been issued more than one written warning in a 24-hour period.

The police department’s codes enforcement unit estimates 60 percent of its codes violation cases in the past three years involved rental properties.

Reactions generally favorable

Councilman Davis, who represents council’s District 1, said the new law will have effects citywide.

“The issues we’re trying to address impact not just quality of life .. (but) it has an impact on economic development,” Davis said. “That is critical to certain parts of the city.”

Lucas, whose neighborhood adjoins the University of South Carolina, has been part of the neighborhood coalition that has worked with police on ways to fix the problems.

The retired attorney said coalition members support the updated proposal. “This ordinance is really designed to go after chronic (landlord) problems,” she said. “We’re not trying to play ‘gotcha’ with responsible landlords.”

Realtor, landlord and property manager Laine Ligon said he initially thought the changes were unnecessary.

But an owner of Bollin Ligon Walker said he’s come around after being involved in rewriting the proposed new law.

“I think we’ve reached a pretty fair compromise,” said Ligon, the owner of a company that manages about 350 apartments and houses in Shandon, University Hill, Rosewood and other neighborhoods. Ligon said he thinks most members of Central Carolina Realtors Association, of which he’s a member, also will agree.

Paul Haynes is a landlord who was one of the most outspoken critics of the plan when it was presented last year. He said he’s satisfied with the compromise, especially the new point system that accounts for the severity of an offense.

“They definitely have softened the law,” Haynes said. “I certainly don’t like city government injecting itself into my business ... but I can see their position. It’s going to be a lot more paperwork for me, but I’m not 100 percent against it.”

This story was originally published February 20, 2016 at 7:06 PM with the headline "Columbia’s latest try at landlord oversight draws wider support."