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.
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.
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.