Rental regulations up for final reading tonight
The Laramie City Council is scheduled to decide the fate of a proposed City Rental Housing Code at its regular meeting. The code’s health and safety standards have been bitterly debated.
The Laramie City Council could institute health and safety standards for rental housing when Original Ordinance 2039 receives its third and final vote tonight.
Those standards would be in place — with the infrastructure to enforce them — by 2023, according to the city manager’s proposed timeline.
The City Rental Housing Code would require rental units to be weatherproofed and structurally sound, free of mold and pests, and with working fire alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and locks on windows and doors. The code would also require major electrical, plumbing and heating work to be performed by licensed professionals.
Additionally, the ordinance outlines a registration system, under which landlords must register each rental unit they manage and designate a local property manager if they themselves are not local. The ordinance directs the city manager’s office to establish a complaint system. Tenants who believe their apartment falls short of the new requirements can lodge a complaint with the city, which will prompt the city manager to investigate the claim and potentially order fixes. The city manager can fine the landlord if they fail to follow the order in a timely manner.
Laramie is in the midst of a housing crisis. Homes are scarce; many of the available homes are too pricey for middle- and low-income residents; and while the majority of city residents rents the home they live in, landlords have long been a formidable force in city politics.
Many of the landlords who oppose the rental regulations argue that existing state law makes local regulations unnecessary. But City Councilor Erin O’Doherty said asking poor and inexperienced tenants to seek remedies in court is unrealistic.
“The state law is not enough because you have to go through the court system for minor things,” she said. “Anybody that’s ever had to go to court knows it’s not a simple thing. And landlords can deduct legal fees, so they could get the best lawyer in America and have them take care of their side of the case. And what choice do tenants have? They can’t write off legal fees. They have to do it on their own. And if they already feel they’ve been taken advantage of by losing their deposit, where are they going to get the money to hire a good lawyer?”
‘Housing is not financially realistic’
Tenants are keenly aware of the power imbalance between landlords and themselves. Albany County is one of Wyoming’s poorest, and as the state’s only university town, Laramie has a lot of young, first-time renters.
ASUW, the University of Wyoming student senate, passed a resolution supporting the rental regulations. That resolution also includes highlights from a student survey conducted in October. More than 23 percent of the 577 student renters surveyed had complaints about current or former landlords.
“It would be nice to have some policies in place in Laramie that actually protect tenants,” a student renter writes. “There is really nobody to turn to without expensive legal fees.”
Dozens of the complaints describe unresponsive landlords, unwilling to fix broken appliances, windows, locks, mold issues, sewer problems and more.
“Major problems,” writes one respondent. “They hold a power imbalance over their tenants, and they ignore our needs and requests even when it concerns our personal safety.”
Many of these complaints reiterated problems highlighted by previous reporting on unsavory landlord business practices, unsafe living conditions and threatening landlords.
Other complaints describe more specific cruelties.
“My landlord is kind of sketchy,” writes one renter. “I still don't have a copy of my lease and when SAFE Project contacted him to try to help pay my rent, he asked if I would just like to find somewhere else to live.”
SAFE Project is a local nonprofit that works with survivors of domestic abuse and violence.
Other respondents describe a culture of fear, highlighting landlords who are “overbearing,” “always watching” or “threatening.”
“The relationship is fine but mostly because I must keep it that way due to his controlling my access to shelter,” one student renter writes.
And for tenants, the stakes are high. With affordable housing in short supply, they must often take apartments below their standards or requirements, because the alternative is having nowhere to live.
“We have been homeless for a long time because of Covid-19 and landlord issues,” one student respondent writes. “Also housing is not financially realistic.”
Support, opposition and amendments
During the ordinance’s first reading, the proposed regulations received an outpouring of support from students, renters and even some landlords.
“ASUW unanimously supported these rental regulations because they know all too well that many people are being taken advantage of,” O’Doherty said. “And if we only have good landlords in town then (the regulations) shouldn’t cause any trouble for them. And if bad landlords don’t like it, then I’m not too concerned.”
Landlords in favor of the regulations made the same argument – that the new health and safety requirements would not impact those who are already maintaining decent properties.
But other landlords remain opposed to the new standards, the registration system, the complaint system, or all three elements – and this faction of landlords and property managers dominated the ordinance’s public hearing two weeks ago.
That same night, the ordinance passed its second reading on a 7-2 vote.
The ordinance was amended last week to clarify language surrounding professional repair requirements and language surrounding entry/exit requirements.
City staff is recommending small additional amendments ahead of tonight’s meeting — for example, widening the definition of “local” to include landlords and property managers living just beyond the county’s borders.
The ordinance’s third and final reading is scheduled for tonight’s virtual city council meeting. Those wishing to comment can do so through Zoom. Those wishing to follow along can do so on the city’s YouTube channel.
Once again, Jeff Victor engages in purposefully biased creative writing (it'd be incorrect to call it "reporting") and disinformation.
Laramie is not undergoing a "housing crisis." In 1992, 30 years ago, we had people literally sleeping in cars at the start of UW's fall semester due to a lack of available housing. In Laramie today, we have copious vacancies and rents have declined as a result. There has also been much new construction, and so the quality of rental housing is vastly improved.
Here are just some of the factual inaccuracies in the creative writing piece above.
* The "infrastructure to enforce" the Draconian regulations could only be in force in 2023 if the City hired several new employees dedicated to the job of doing so. With state funding to the City being cut, this wouldn't happen. Instead, bureaucrats would enforce the regulations spottily, against specific rental owners and managers they decided to target.
* A requirement to use licensed contractors to perform routine repairs would actually harm the quality and habitability of housing, and increase rents dramatically, by prohibiting a rental owner from pulling a permit and doing the job herself. Contractors in Laramie are backlogged and expensive, charge absurd markups on parts (as much as 10 TIMES the prices available at local hardware stores or "big boxes" such as Lowe's and Home Depot), and often send poorly trained apprentices who do the job less skillfully than an experienced rental owner. Since permitted work is inspected, there's no danger inherent in having the landlord do the work; the requirement was added to the ordinance (which was largely copied from one in Oregon) to enforce city bureaucrats' desire for control and in response to lobbying by those local contractors, who have recently hiked their hourly rates.
* The use of courts to enforce existing laws is not "unrealistic." For a fee of $10 - that's right, only $10 - anyone can file a suit in small claims court WITHOUT A LAWYER and avail himself or herself of remedies provided by state law. (Yes, there may be other costs, such as for a process server, but these are also reasonable.) The local Circuit Court has been very friendly to legitimate tenant complaints, and free legal counseling is available to help tenants.
* Albany County is not "poor." Students at the University willingly forego income while getting an education, but often have great family wealth and are supported by generous scholarships such as the Hathaway. Thus, our county's income numbers don't reflect poverty but rather intentional decisions to forego present income for future income. Albany County's actual poor - and, yes, there are certainly some - are better off than in most of the state due to a rich variety of charitable organizations, some of which the City itself already funds.
* There has not been an "outpouring of support" for the regulations. Overall, the numbers of speakers in favor of and against the ordinance at City Council meetings have been roughly equal. However, since the ordinance has (probably intentionally) been brought forth during the winter break when members of the public were unavailable to comment, public input has been sparse. Some of the lack of public input may also be due to the fact that meetings have been conducted via Zoom. Many of Laramie's older residents, who rely upon renting parts of their homes for retirement income, are naive as to how to use Zoom and have been unable to join the meetings.
* ASUW, at one time, worked with local landlords to ensure that tenants were aware of both their rights and their responsibilities. Local landlords even provided, at their own expense, a detailed publication explaining the state law and how tenants could use it to remedy problems. However, perhaps due to a lack of institutional memory, ASUW "lost" the brochure and stopped reproducing it for students, depriving them of that resource. ASUW has not responded to attempts to contact it regarding the harms that the proposed ordinance would do.
* As in previous pieces, Mr. Victor purposefully omits key facts. He does not note that the proposed ordinance would not be applicable to Laramie's largest and most problematic landlords, including UW, CHA, and WCDA; that it violates state law and thus would, unless greatly revised, be nullified by the courts if passed; that it was drafted without any solicitation of public input or consultation with rental housing professionals (not even the "good guys" who maintain quality rentals and manage them ethically); or that the City Council members most in favor of the ordnance have openly expressed a desire to wreak vengeance on landlords due to perceived slights in their personal pasts.
In short, the proposed ordinance is illegal, would create unwarranted bureaucracy, would raise rents, would reduce the supply of available housing, and would not benefit tenants, who already have BETTER recourse under existing state law. But Mr. Victor - like so many biased purveyors of "news" nowadays - persists in attempting to spread disinformation to bolster his personal anti-landlord agenda. From this, we know not to trust any of his "reporting." His articles are biased opinion pieces, not fact.