Landlords asked, and Police Department is looking for volunteers to help it do tenant background checks

CEDAR RAPIDS - Do it like Davenport, say Cedar Rapids landlords.

In one new way, the city of Cedar Rapids plans to do just that.

The Cedar Rapids Police Department on Wednesday said it is working to expand its Volunteers in Policing program so citizen volunteers at the department can do what a volunteer cadre does at the Davenport Police Department – provide tenant background checks for landlords at no cost.

“Yes, we're going to do it,” police Lt. Chuck Mincks said Wednesday.

Mincks said he intends to call local landlord leaders and see if they can help recruit volunteers to the program to help speed it into place.

The lack of a program to provide free tenant background checks was one of the key reasons a long line of vocal landlords told the City Council on Tuesday evening to toss out a proposed change in the city's housing code.

The new code raises fees and requires landlord licensing, requires annual registration of properties and annual fee payments and requires a crime-free addendum to be attached to landlord-tenant leases, all items that landlords opposed.

Neighborhood leaders Terry Bilsland, president of the Wellington Heights neighborhood Association, Jerry McGrane, former council member and vice president of the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood Association, and Colleen Lewis of the Cedar Hills Neighborhood Resource Center said the new housing code would clamp down on bad landlords and bad tenants and help clean up neighborhoods and make them safer.

The City Council backed the changes in the housing code on an 8-1 vote. The council also approved an increase in fees, but it chose an option that will raise fees less than another proposal.

Mari Davis, co-founder of Flood-Impacted Landlords and a landlord and property manager, was among landlords who said the mandatory crime-free lease addendum should be scrapped and a free program of tenant background checks put in place.

Davis on Wednesday said she was glad that the Cedar Rapids Police Department intended to institute a program of tenant background checks, but she said the mandatory crime-free addendum still was a bad idea. Maybe neighborhood leaders can volunteer on the police background checks, she added.

At the Tuesday evening council meeting, Walter Skovronski, president of Landlords of Davenport, told the Cedar Rapids council that tenant background checks by the Davenpoprt Police Department has done wonders in driving drug dealers out of Davenport rental properties. This year alone to date, 167 prospective tenants landed in jail on outstanding warrants as a result of the tenant background checks, Skovronski told the council.

Cedar Rapids' Mincks on Wednesday said the Cedar Rapids Police Department thinks the background checks will help it clear some of its outstanding warrants, too.

The city of Davenport also uses a crime-free lease addendum and most landlords there use it, though it is not mandatory, the Davenport Police Department has reported.