Milwaukee to Propose Landlord Licensing and Mandatory Interior Inspections of Rental Property

The city of Milwaukee is planning on introducing a new ordinance that will require rental property owners in certain parts of the city to license their rental properties and submit to mandatory interior inspections by the Department of Neighborhood Services (DNS).

Many of the AASEW board members have been having regular monthly meetings with the new DNS Commissioner Art Dahlberg. During a recent meeting Mr. Dahlberg informed us that in the near future he will be pushing for some form of residential rental inspection program (a.k.a "Landlord Licensing") for portions of the city. During a meeting with Alderman Bob Donovan it was confirmed that this program was in the works and that the city's forthcoming budget already has money earmarked for the program.

Under this program DNS would target certain areas of the city which they consider to be "blighted" or which will soon become "blighted" if something is not done. Other factors that would be considered in determining what areas to target would be the age of the housing stock, the percentage of rental units to owner occupied properties, and the history of complaints in the neighborhood. Mr. Dahlberg indicated that the area of the city that would most likely be addressed first would be the east side near UWM due to the large number of illegally converted dwelling units and poorly maintained properties.

The goal of the program would allegedly be for the owners and the city building inspectors to work together to better the rental housing stock with the building inspectors becoming a resource for rental property owners.

While the specific details were not provided to me, any proposed program will most certainly contain provisions such as the following:

- A requirement that all rental property owners in the targeted area pay a fee to the city for each unit that they own.

- A requirement that rental property owners allow the city building inspectors to conduct mandatory inspections of the interiors of each of their rental properties that are located within the targeted area.

- If no code violations are found then the rental property would receive a certificate of code compliance which would allow the owner to rent out the unit for a period of time until the next mandatory interior inspection would be required.

- If code violations were to be found in the rental property then the owner would be denied a certificate of code compliance (thus preventing the unit from being rented) until the violations were corrected. Depending on the the number and severity of the violations, the rental property owner would be required to submit to an increased number of interior inspections during the ensuing months until the city would determine that the rental property was safe.

While this new program would only focus on the UWM area initially, other areas of town were also mentioned (the north side of Milwaukee for instance) as being targeted eventually. It is fairly obvious that the end goal would be to have all rental properties within the city under this program.

I personally am not in favor of this program and I can't imagine that many landlords would be. If passed this new ordinance will be yet another regulation on rental property owners - a group that is already overly regulated. I can't imagine that tenants are going to enjoy this invasion of their privacy either. Not to mention that the additional costs to landlords will most likely be passed on to the tenant by increased rents. I also personally have difficulty with the fact that the city regularly threatens to cut the number of police, refuse overtime for police, eliminate the number of firemen at ladder companies, and close libraries, but yet they are willing to provide additional money for the hiring of more building inspectors.

While the alleged goal of this residential rental recording program is to improve the quality of the housing stock in the city I can't help but think that it will also be a source of revenue for a city that allegedly is broke.

This proposed ordinance will be addressed in more detail in my future posts.

To read why this program is not a good idea click here.

To read the text of a study conducted by the LaFollette Institute in 2002 on whether or not Landlord Licensing should be implemented in Milwaukee click here. To read a summary of the the study concluding that Landlord Licensing would casue more harm then good if implemented in Milwaukee click here.

For more information go to www.rentalinspectionprogram.com