Will Cedar Rapids landlord ordinance accomplish its goals?
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Landlords here are getting closer to being required to conduct mandatory criminal background checks of their prospective tenants.
A special City Council committee on Tuesday said they supported an amendment to the city’s rental housing ordinance that would make the background checks mandatory and would position the Police Department to provide landlords with a comprehensive tenant criminal-background check for an estimated fee of $6 for each check.
The full City Council is slated to take up the matter in February, said the committee members — Monica Vernon, Pat Shey and Justin Shields.
City officials on Tuesday made it clear that requiring background checks does not mean that a landlord can’t rent to a tenant who has had prior criminal problems. Landlords should be allowed to give tenants second chances, Vernon said.
However, landlords who don’t conduct background checks or who rent to criminals and then are found to have nuisance properties might have their ability to rent properties in Cedar Rapids taken away, the committee members said.
The City Hall attempt to toughen the city’s rental housing code is designed to improve housing and neighborhoods and make the city less friendly to criminals, city officials have said.
Do you think the proposal will achieve its goals?
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I wonder if the solution to the problems the city is attempting to eliminate may also lie in focusing on the landlords as well.
I’ve known of quite a number of ‘landlords’ who were or are unable to maintain their properties since all rents paid are used to support everything except maintaining a financial reserve for repairs.
I’ve also known of a few property owners who used underfunded intermediaries to act as landlords with a promise that they could ‘buy their way’ into the business of being a landlord. The payoff for the property owner is to load the would be business owner up with so much financial responsibility that they themselves go through ‘bankruptcy’ and forfeit the item they used as collateral (often a home) to the property owner.
Sometimes the tenant is just the innocent bystander who only wants a roof over their head.
It depends on what the goal is for the ordinance hopes to accomplish in reality. Is it to make landlords responsible for other adults who rent from them, people they may have as guests, or potentially have the city further the goals of the Affordable Housing Network, and raise revenues for the city/county then the answer may be yes. If it is to reduce crime, I believe it is not going to work. It’s not addressing the issues, it is simply changing the venue of the activity.
If the ordinance does work what are the chances that it will only push the criminals out into rural areas where there are no police or force people who don’t pass the background check to double up with people who do.
Landlords aren’t babysitters nor are they police officers. The only thing that should matter is how are tenants behaving while they are living in a particular rental unit. The kind of people I don’t want living next door to me are not likely to show up on a criminal background check because obnoxious jerk is, unfortunately, not against the law