Council enacts new housing code over chorus of landlord protests

CEDAR RAPIDS – The City Council last night enacted a new housing code, which landlords fought and which neighborhood leaders said was a necessary step to take on bad landlords and bad tenants and to clean up  neighborhoods and make them more safe.

The council vote was 8-1 to approve the second of two required readings, and 7-2, to push ahead and approve a third and final reading.

The council, on a 9-0 vote, then approved a new schedule of registration and inspection fees for landlords, a schedule that calls for higher fees than today but lower fees than an alternative proposal would have allowed.

Part of the complaint from landlords related to the size in the proposed change in fees.

Council members Pat Shey and Chuck Swore emphasized that the council can make changes to the law as the city gets used to it.

Council member Monica Vernon called the new housing code "bad policy" and voted against it.

Landlords, some of whom have threatened to sue the city over the new housing code, object to a new $50 landlord license fee, saying it's sufficient for landlords to pay fees on individual pieces of property. The new license fee will help the city raise as much as $200,000 to purchase computer software to better track landlord registrations and inspections.

Under the new code, landlords will annually have to register their properties rather than once every five years when it's time for the city inspection. The city says this will also help it keep better track of rental properties.

Landlords also wanted a new mandatory crime-free addendum to leases to be made optional, though neighborhood leaders argued that bad tenants and bad landlords won't use it then.

Landlords said again last night that they liked a feature of the housing code in Davenport in which the Police Department does background checks of tenants with the help of citizen voluteers. Davenport also has a crime-free addendum to leases and most landlords use it, but it is not mandatory, Davenport officials have said.

More than one landlord said the crime-free addendum, which landlords sign with their tenants, would prompt some tenants, including some women in domestic violence cases, from calling the police for fear of being evicted.

Vernon said she feared that result, too.

However, Cedar Rapids police Lt. Chuck Mincks said the crime-free addendum would never be used to punish a crime victim. The addendum is to help the city require better behavior from bad landlords and bad tenants and to help good landlords win eviction cases in court against bad tenants, Mincks said.

The City Council has been working since 2006 to try to take steps to clean up nuisance properties. The effort got pushed to the side after the June 2008 flood, before reemerging in the last six to eight months, city officials said.

Council member Shey said he talked in recent days to Dale Todd, a former City Council member and neighborhood president, and Shey said the city has been trying to implement tougher rules on problem landlords and tenants for 20 years.