City officials brought the idea of expanding the city’s rental licensing program for discussion at the Stevens Point Public Protection Committee at its Monday, April 10, meeting.

The purpose of licensing rental properties would be to give the municipality a better ability to inspect rental buildings for faulty wiring, operational smoke detectors and other health and safety codes.

“Right now, we require licensing for properties that have three or more units or four or more individuals who live in a single unit. A lot of those are grandfathered-in properties, a lot of Stevens Point was zoned multi-family in the 1970s and were down-zoned to two-family zoning districts. However, those uses are allowed to remain,” said Michael Ostrowski, director of Community Development.

Ostrowski said bringing it up for discussion now fits because of a recent state law change which impacts how the city charges for inspection as well as some other administrative changes.

“We have to modify our ordinance if we want to be in compliance with state law. So, right now we’ve put that rental licensing ordinance on hold. In doing so, it brings up the broader conversation of, ‘do we want to look at expanding the program to all rentals?’ Or do we want to continue as is with (licensing) certain rentals like we’re doing, or do we not want to have a licensing program at all?” Ostrowski said. “That’s where I left it (Monday) night in looking for some comments from the Public Protection Committee as well as the public.”

Garrett Ryan, District 3, said he can see the pros and the cons. Being able to actively check in on rentals to make sure they are safe for living is important, but finding the money to pay for those inspections would be an obstacle to hurdle.

“It’s not only college students, it’s seniors, it’s everyone,” said Stevens Point Fire Chief Bob Finn. “We go on calls daily/weekly to rentals where people don’t have operating smoke detectors … we’re giving tenants smoke detectors so they have a safe place to live.

“In the last couple of years, we have had a lot of fires in the downtown area. Some of them are due to faulty wiring – old wiring not connecting to the new (correctly) – but we have no legal right to go in and inspect these places,” Finn said.

“One kid’s mother gave him a smoke detector for Christmas. He came back to college on Christmas break, put the battery in, was in the house less than 36 hours and that smoke detector had saved his life,” Finn said. “We just shut down a college housing (unit) for carbon monoxide. We went there on an ambulance call for someone feeling sick, we determined it was carbon monoxide and (we) shut down the place. People are afraid to call in and complain and nobody should have to live without a CO or smoke detector in this age.”

Finn said anyone who needs a smoke detector – or has one that’s more than 10 years old – can call the fire department and they’ll come out and install a new one as well as provide a safety check of the house.

Residents must volunteer for the services, though, and many people are unaware it is an option.

“I think this is a good idea and something that needs to be explored, but my only question is the five years. I think that’s kind of a long span. I think it should be shortened a little bit because a lot can happen in five years,” said Jeremy Slowinski, District 6.

“I guess I’ll be somewhat a voice of dissent on this one … A lot of talking points are on the goal of safe housing – and let’s be clear, I don’t think anybody doesn’t want safe housing – as a landlord, we have the most to lose if we don’t provide safe housing. So, I understand there are landlords out there who aren’t as diligent, but for me everything is driven by liability,” said Travis Haines, of Candlewood Property Management.

“If safety’s the goal – which isn’t a unique topic to rental housing – why draw the line at rental housing?” Haines said. “I view the city as a last line of defense, not the first. I feel the landlord and tenants should be working this out ahead of time. If the landlords aren’t being cooperative, that’s the spot when the inspection department should be stepping in.”

While it was discussion only and the Board of Public Works took no action, board members did say they would like Ostrowski and his team to move forward with drafting up a new licensing program for further review.

“From here we’ll put together some proposals, but this is a very complex issue. There are a lot of things that go into it and there’s a cost in how inspections are done and when they’ll be done,” Ostrowski said.

“In Oshkosh, they’re doing it every five years. They have, I think, 15,000 or 16,000 rentals in the city. We have about 5,500 rentals. That’s a lot of rentals, so it takes a lot of time to do the inspections. And it isn’t just the initial inspection. If there are issues with the initial inspection, we’re going to have to go back another time, maybe two or three times,” Ostrowski said.

“If the city moves forward with doing a program, we’re going to have to weigh how frequent we’re going to want to do this. There were some comments made (Monday) about how every five years sounds like a long time, but keep in mind that’s 1,100 units that need inspection every year. Let’s say 30 or 40 percent of them fail the first inspection, you’ve got to go back again. So, there’s another couple hundred you’ll have to go back to,” he said.

“It gets down to timing and staffing, but if the ultimate goal of this program is safety, which it should be, there are other properties in the city that should be inspected as well,” he said. “If we want to move forward with a rental licensing program, why are we not inspecting other rental properties that may be older, that may have a lot more issues associated with them.

“The example I give is let’s say you have a new apartment complex that gets built. Well, we require a license for that building that was built today or very recently to meet today’s code standard – fire sprinkler system and everything else in it – that is probably a fairly safe building. But yet we don’t do any inspections of properties that are single- or two-family that were built some time ago and may not have been updated,” Ostrowski.

“Again, if the ultimate goal is safety, we should be looking at a more all-encompassing approach, but there are other things we need to weigh in terms of what it does for staffing and how it gets paid for,” Ostrowski said

Ostrowski said the city will work on developing a possible plan to present to the Common Council over the next few months. He also said even if the Council approved moving forward with a new licensing program, the roll out of the program would be slow because landlords would need plenty of time to update their lease agreements with their tenants.