Our Proposal
Our position is not to repeal the ordinance, but to make rental inspections more workable for everyone, including landlords and renters. Obviously, the ordinance was adopted and implemented with very little, if any, input from the landlord/renter community.
We understand that the city council receives complaints from residents about rentals that aren’t taken care of. We landlords and renters do not like to live next to unkept properties, either. (Our rental fence was once knocked down by the tenant next door whose landlord was brand new and didn’t know how to screen renters nor was familiar with the Texas Property Code.)
We share the desire to see properties in the community maintained and endorse cracking down on people who don’t do so. (The landlords who buy eyesore properties and renovate them with their own money don’t want to be painted with the same brush as slumlords.)
We believe educating both landlords and renters of city requirements, and imposing strict sanctions on bad landlords, is a better approach than involuntary inspection of every single rental property in the city. It is not an efficient use of city resources, including our tax money, especially when only one out of 644 properties failed the inspection!
Based on our experience in Garland, we believe that the landlord/renter community should be involved in fashioning a workable program in order for the rental registration/inspection program to be successful. Some council members expressed their desire to reward good landlords during the council meeting of November 28, 2011.
Here are some of our ideas:
-Create pamphlets to be given to renters spelling out how the property should be maintained (including when the trash should be taken out) and providing contact information so they can contact the city if there is an uncorrected violation.
-Offer training programs to landlords and renters to inform them of code requirements and good property management practices. (e.g. Good Neighbor Program. The city of Paramount's program was given a Best Practices Award for Innovation by HUD in 2000.)
-Set up a landlord panel that could mediate issues with unresponsive landlords.
-If landlords received more than a certain number of code violations during 12 months, they will have to take a class on property maintenance.
We understand that the city council receives complaints from residents about rentals that aren’t taken care of. We landlords and renters do not like to live next to unkept properties, either. (Our rental fence was once knocked down by the tenant next door whose landlord was brand new and didn’t know how to screen renters nor was familiar with the Texas Property Code.)
We share the desire to see properties in the community maintained and endorse cracking down on people who don’t do so. (The landlords who buy eyesore properties and renovate them with their own money don’t want to be painted with the same brush as slumlords.)
We believe educating both landlords and renters of city requirements, and imposing strict sanctions on bad landlords, is a better approach than involuntary inspection of every single rental property in the city. It is not an efficient use of city resources, including our tax money, especially when only one out of 644 properties failed the inspection!
Based on our experience in Garland, we believe that the landlord/renter community should be involved in fashioning a workable program in order for the rental registration/inspection program to be successful. Some council members expressed their desire to reward good landlords during the council meeting of November 28, 2011.
Here are some of our ideas:
-Create pamphlets to be given to renters spelling out how the property should be maintained (including when the trash should be taken out) and providing contact information so they can contact the city if there is an uncorrected violation.
-Offer training programs to landlords and renters to inform them of code requirements and good property management practices. (e.g. Good Neighbor Program. The city of Paramount's program was given a Best Practices Award for Innovation by HUD in 2000.)
-Set up a landlord panel that could mediate issues with unresponsive landlords.
-If landlords received more than a certain number of code violations during 12 months, they will have to take a class on property maintenance.
We need your support to put this issue back on the council agenda!
The City of Plano decided that a similar program was a "solution looking for a problem.…it does not seem fair to put a program in-place that impacts the 99 percent of owners who take good care of their rental homes to go after the 1 percent who do not…”
