Rental registry changes sent to committee
Some councilors have questions
WORCESTER — The city’s controversial Rental Property Registration program returned to the City Council floor Tuesday after City Manager Eric D. Batista proposed changes to the ordinance.
Some councilors supported the program, which the council approved unanimously in 2022, and appreciated Batista’s revisions.
“In my mind, it saves people’s lives,” Mayor Joseph M. Petty said. “At the end of the day, this is the purpose of this. It’s about the safety of the people that live in the city of Worcester. It’s also about the safety of our firefighters and inspectional services people.”
However, others still had questions. The council voted to send the item to the Standing Committee on Economic Development for further discussion.
“I don’t know that we’re going to execute this in a way that folks who support this want us to,” Councilor-at-Large Khrystian King said.
“I really think that we should be going back to the drawing board.”
The Rental Registration Program requires any person who owns a property that is rented out to register each unit with the city.
The registry includes residential, commercial and industrial properties as well as vacant lots that are rented for any purpose.
Batista’s changes would lower two $300 daily fines associated with the program.
A $300 daily fine for failing to register was amended to a monthly fine equal to double the registration or renewal fee. Registering a residential, commercial, retail or office unit costs $15 and it costs $25 to register a lot.
It costs $5 to renew residential, commercial, retail or office unit and $15 for lots.
A city spokesperson said the fine for an unregistered triple-decker, which would cost $45 to register, could be $90 per month.
A daily $300 fine for not complying with the required inspection was lowered to to $200 a month.
The registration deadline was moved to July 1. The ordinances would also state that properties exempted from the program are kept on file by the Department of Inspectional Services.
The City Council does not meet again in regular session until May 7. The Economic Development Committee will meet April 23.
The rental registry program has had a bumpy path.
Dating to 2018
In 2019, then-District 5 City Councilor Matthew Wally proposed a registry. The proposal came after the 2018 death of Worcester firefighter Christopher Roy in a burning apartment.
Discussion of a registry was revived in 2022 shortly after the fatal 2 Gage St. fire, which took place on a property with a history of health and safety violations.
That same year, tenants had to evacuate a building at 267 Mill St. in July due to a partial roof collapse.
City officials have said the program would provide a greater overview of the rental housing stock and collect contact information for property owners. Officials
said inspectors spend a great deal of time trying to get in contact with property owners.
The program aims to have each rental property inspected every five years.
The registry’s fee structure is intended to help fund the program.
The program made its way through the City Council process, with unanimous votes to formally advertise and adopt the ordinances in 2022.
Rocky start
However, the registry reared back after the city unrolled the program through a March 9 landlord summit and letters sent to property owners.
March 26, councilors said they had received an overwhelming series of questions and some criticized the rollout. The $300 fine was also called exorbitant.
April 2, the council also received a citizen’s petition to have Batista suspend the program and schedule public hearings. It was sent to both Batista and the Economic Development Committee.
In his communication, Batista wrote the fine would only apply to property owners who have not registered their properties or have not complied with city inspections.
Batista said Tuesday that inspectors would not come in unannounced to inspect rooms and will focus on basic sanitary standards
“We’re not going to just randomly show up and barge into somebody’s unit and inspect the unit,” Batista said. “The program...requires the landlord to schedule an appointment for the inspectors to go out and inspect the property.”
District 5 City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, District 4 City Councilor Luis Ojeda and Councilor-at-Large Kathleen Toomey lent words of support to the program.
Haxhiaj said registries with stringent policies are implemented across the country.
“All of them have a common thread — which is a thread that also is present in our ordinance — which is that this is for public health and safety reasons” Haxhiaj said.
Haxhiaj said she would have preferred a vote to advertise the changes Tuesday.
Ojeda and Toomey shared that they received calls from residents who were afraid to report issues with their rental properties.
Legal review
Petty requested a legal opinion from the Law Department on the constitutionality of inspecting apartment units to address concerns raised by residents.
Councilor-at-Large Morris Bergman said he needed to see the legal opinion and his own research found registries losing to court challenges.
While the initial recommendation from Batista was to formally advertise the ordinance changes, District 3 City Councilor George Russell said he wished to hear the changes in committee.
Russell said the city manager’s changes were welcome, even if he said it did not include every issue he heard from constituents.
King, who voted against the registry in committee in 2022 prior to voting to approve its implementation, said he had longstanding questions that have gone unanswered. He referenced concerns about backlogged inspections, Inspectional Services staffing, reporting illegal behavior discovered during an inspection and whether the city knows which properties are high risk.