Letters: Consider burdens landlords face

Kit Smith’s call for a new landlord ordinance (“Protect neighbors from bad landlords and renters,” March 28) demands a response from those of us who grapple every day with maintenance problems that may endanger the health and safety of tenants and surrounding properties. It demands a response from those of us who grapple with educating tenants about upkeep to keep maintenance costs down and thus rent, who grapple with collecting enough rent to satisfy property tax and risk-management demands as well as maintenance needs, who grapple with ordinances that criminalize putative violators for non-criminal behavior, which underlines the fact that such ordinances are far removed from their oft-repeated intent to protect the public against the health and safety hazards of poorly maintained property.

Ms. Smith and her owner-occupied constituency assert that college student behavior has caused neighborhood deterioration and has deprived this class from enjoying their property. They say authorities have no ability to enforce existing ordinances without the vast majority of more-or-less complying rental property owners paying $25 per dwelling unit and being subjected to an even more legally torturous set of regulations. They support a regulatory taking of property if a landlord refuses to abide by an irrelevant ordinance.

They ignore the fact that landlords pay property taxes for school operations (which equal roughly 50 percent of our property taxes) while homeowners pay nothing for this. Though the tax is a state matter, the impact on landlords is substantial.

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 6:07 AM with the headline "Letters: Consider burdens landlords face."