The Rochester City Council will vote this month on a sweeping package of legislation that includes harsher penalties for landlords whose properties do not comply with city code.
The legislation, introduced by Mayor Malik Evans and Council President Miguel Melendez, would also establish a vacant property registry and direct the administration to develop a landlord-tenant bill of rights, an educational tool meant to be mailed directly to Rochester renters and property owners beginning January 2024.
“If you have a property that’s allowed to sit for a year, two years, 10 years, 15 years without recourse, it’s problematic and certainly has an impact on the quality of life for the rest of the community,” Melendez said.
Melendez said the legislation builds on the work of the city’s Housing Quality Taskforce, a 21-member panel of renters, property owners, and advocates which Mayor Malik Evans brought together last year to examine Rochester’s housing issues and recommend ways to address them.
Council is expected to vote on the measures during its May 23 meeting.
The legislation would require property owners to register the properties with the city within 60 days if the property becomes vacant. From there, the owners are required to submit a plan on whether they are going to rehabilitate, demolish, or keep the property vacant.
For every year the property is vacant, the owners would pay a fee to keep it registered. The charges range from $250 to $1,000 for the first three years of one- to three-unit houses, $500 to $2,000 for a 4–6-unit rental property, $100 to $400 per unit for buildings with seven or more units, and $1,000 to $4,000 for commercial properties.
There are currently 1,465 vacant properties in the city, according to the city’s property database BuildingBlocks. That’s 2.2% of all city properties.
If the property remains vacant and the owner doesn’t pay the fines, or it has persistent code violations, the city can issue further fines or take possession of the building. Mayor Malik Evans announced the proposal on April 28 and issued a direct warning to landlords: “If you don’t correct the code violation, we will hold you accountable.”
The legislation also increases penalties for code violations. It would boost fines:
- From $50 to $100 for minor offenses, and the city can issue new tickets for the violations every 30 days;
- From $75 to $250 for health and safety violations, w and the city can issue new tickets for the violations every 30 days;
- From $150 to $500 for violations posing an immediate hazard, and the city can issue new tickets for the violations every week.
When owners are delinquent for more than 180 days, the fine can go up to $1,000 per day, or carry jail time.
Melendez said that previously, landlords could easily ignore the fines because they were trivial
“By virtue of us focusing on creating opportunities for compliance and being up front about it, I think it will be more proactive in getting property owners to comply,” Melendez said.
Not everyone is happy with the proposals. Matt Drouin, a landlord who served on the Housing Quality Taskforce, said that he doesn’t feel like the legislation fixes the core issues of poverty, and any move to improve housing quality must be based in incentivizing, rather than punishing landlords.
“We’re looking at the symptoms and not the cause of the symptoms,” Drouin said. “The cause of the symptoms is not some evil genius coming in and taking advantage of low-income families. We have a broken system...I think we need to empower low-income families, whether that’s through subsidies or incentivizing responsible low-income housing providers through subsidies to deliver the type of housing quality we want to see as a community.”
But Melendez said the goal of the plan is not to punish landlords, but to ensure they are complying with city code. He also said the bills are just one step in a long-term process in addressing housing issues.
“We’re committed, Council is committed, I think the administration is committed, to really focusing on how, over the long haul, it’s not going to be overnight, we can change housing quality in the city of Rochester,” Melendez said.
