Only 25% of Columbia landlords have required permits a week before deadline

Despite an extended deadline that’s about a week from expiring, the vast majority of Columbia landlords have not gotten mandatory new city permits for apartments they rent.

Owners who don’t register by an Oct. 1 deadline could face as much as a $500-per-day, per-unit fine if they continue to rent an apartment.

On the whole, landlords seem to be aware of the city’s new ordinance designed to keep properties from becoming dangerous or rundown and tenants from being neighborhood problems. The landlords are just procrastinating.

Slightly more than one-fourth of the estimated 4,000 properties the police department calculates are used as apartments had been registered as of late this week. Owners had registered 1,034 properties as of Thursday, said David Hatcher, the city’s chief codes enforcer.

Those 1,000-plus properties have 2,952 individual apartment units, according to data compiled by Hatcher’s office, which is part of the Columbia Police Department.

Some landlords have objected all along to the controversial permits, which are designed to help city leaders get a handle on dilapidated properties that hurt surrounding property values and blight neighborhoods. Many landlords complained the new law is burdensome, unwarranted and doesn’t deal with the real problem – misbehaving tenants.

City Council passed the law this year after loud complaints from neighborhood leaders who focused largely on absentee landlords and on rentals by students who host large parties, park illegally and otherwise trash the apartment houses where they live.

Among the law’s key goals:

▪ Getting an accurate count of the number of apartments in Columbia.

▪ Acquiring a complete list of landlords.

▪ Having a means of reaching landlords when problems are reported.

▪ And being able to hold problem landlords – and indirectly problem tenants – accountable.

Tick tock

“There are eight days left, and there are a lot of people who haven’t registered,” Hatcher said late this week. “That’s why we gave the grace period. If we find someone who is in violation, you are subject to the penalties.”

Penalties range from a warning to a $500 daily fine. Further, without a permit, landlords would be renting illegally and could be denied the authority to operate.

The Oct. 1 deadline – which had been extended by 90 days – falls on a Saturday. Hatcher said that as long as applications for permits are postmarked by the deadline, his office will not consider landlords to be renting illegally.

Hatcher and his 12 codes enforcers are responsible for the new city law, which imposes a $25 per-unit fee, except for homes or complexes that have more than five apartments. Those landlords must have more expensive business licenses, but are exempt from the $25 fee.

Many landlords who own one or two apartments have made the time to meet the law, Hatcher said. But large complexes have been particularly slow to submit paperwork. One complex that has 350 apartments filed with the city Thursday morning.

Raj Aluri owns 94 apartments, most immediately around the University of South Carolina campus.

“As we speak, we’re working on it,” Aluri said of the registrations forms. “It’s just more paperwork. I think that people who are in this business for a long time, they will comply.”

The Central Carolina Realtors Association, which represents property managers who oversee complexes or multiple rentals, agrees with Aluri.

“A lot of people are waiting right up to the deadline,” said Taylor Oxendine, who is a liaison between the association and government offices. For many landlords, it’s a matter of not turning over money any sooner than they have to, Oxendine said.

But the number of permitted properties is lagging enough that the police department issued another public reminder on Tuesday.

Hatcher’s office also is distributing 3,000 doorknob hangers that outline the key provisions of the law, including demerit points that accumulate based on the number and severity of written violations that may include property maintenance problems.

In June, Hatcher’s office wrote 9,000 letters to property owners who are likely to be affected by the law.

New law really a money grab?

Among areas of the city lagging in registered properties are neighborhoods immediately surrounding USC, such as University Hill, according to data from Hatcher’s office.

Residents who live around the university and other city colleges were among the first to raise the issue in 2014 that properties had become rundown and tenants were causing trouble in otherwise quiet neighborhoods.

Jennifer Gardner owns 23 apartments, largely in the Shandon neighborhood. She has been outspoken in her opposition to the new law.

Gardner said she will comply with the new requirements. “If I don’t, they’ll begin fining. They’re after money. It’s that simple.”

Gardner, who bought her first rental property in 1979, said she has gotten a business license for the first time. When asked why she had not already gotten a business license under the old law because she has more than five rental units, Gardner said, “That’s a good question. Probably because it wasn’t enforced.”

One of the aims of the new law was to put teeth into the older version so that landlords could not as easily rent units without the city’s knowledge or do so without paying for a business license.

Gardner is not the only landlord who recently has gotten a business license.

Hatcher’s figures show that 45 new landlords have been licensed since mid-June after the law had been approved.

As of Thursday morning, 673 landlords had gotten rental permits and 314 had business licenses.

This story was originally published September 23, 2016 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Only 25% of Columbia landlords have required permits a week before deadline."