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Ludington Rental Inspection Ordinance, Crux of Area's Housing Crisis, Turns Ten Years Old
Ludington's original Rental Inspection Ordinance officially turned 10 years old this week, this last Sunday being the ten-year anniversary of the Ludington City Council's passing of the program that registers rental property units and has a city officer inspect them for compliance with the International Property Maintenance Code.
Landlords, tenants, and others came out to multiple sessions of the city council starting back in the spring of 2015 up to the end of October telling councilors and all others that this was a bad idea and an infringement of basic civil rights of those involved. Despite this. four of six councilors voted to enact it. First-term and current Councilor Kathy Winczewski, the deciding vote, indicated she wanted the program to be reviewed in a year by the council, but it never had any formal review.
Several people, even non-landlords like this reporter, predicted that this program would lead to the loss of hundreds of affordable housing units, without any good prospect of recovering them. Many had even foreseen that those would not be easily replaceable by relying on government housing programs, and that any new units made from the private sector would not be affordable. The stats provided by a recent housing study bears this out:
Thus, our area's current housing crisis and homelessness problems were very predictable and could have been lessened or even avoided had the council decided not to send their people into our private homes and disincentivize establishing and maintaining affordable rental units. Remarkably, the local experts behind the Rental Inspection Ordinance push would maintain for seven years that the reverse would happen if we were to put it into action. From the May 5, 2009 minutes of the Ludington Planning Commission (the birthplace of most bad government policies), Commissioner Joe Moloney started the ball rolling by acting on a counterintuitive notion:
In Moloney's defense, PC members across the state are fed a lot of baloney in the course of their training about "more government" being the solution to all zoning and housing problems. He suggested that rental registrations/inspections would be the path towards getting affordable housing, and it's really unclear how he came to that conclusion without believing that the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) and other federal housing assistance would make affordable housing units in Ludington to replace all of the low-end housing being taken out of the matrix, and then some.
But Moloney would show up throughout 2015 and argue this point at meetings to try and sell the concept, regardless of those providing housing services and reasonable guys like myself telling him a much different story. Separating the alarmism out of some of the officials proclaiming our area has a severe housing crisis, having an affordable place to stay in the Ludington area has gotten a lot tougher. Even the 'experts' utilizing the crisis in order to try and game more money from MSHDA and grants can't help but be astounded by the numbers in a county where the two incorporated cities therein have ambitious rental inspection programs:
Yet, they are not honest enough to tell us what one of the main factors might be. For the other side, the landlords can say that they told them so, but the same people who have foisted non-affordable housing on us will defend themselves with their own sophistry about how the government can come in and fix this issue that has just worked fine throughout the years of our republic without their help. Believe that what the government wants for your housing future is not the same as what you want for your housing future.
One cannot overcome such sophistry easy with rational arguments using common sense, so maybe they would understand better artificial intelligence (AI) explaining the basics to them. I asked Google AI a simple question, and I halfway expected it to follow along with the myths of those who trumpet rental registrations as good things, like Mr. Moloney does. But what I got was supportive of reality:
Can mandatory rental inspection ordinances unintentionally harm the affordable housing market?
- Fees and penalties: Municipalities often charge per-unit registration and inspection fees, which increase operating costs for property owners. Landlords who fail inspections face additional reinspection fees and potential fines, further raising expenses.
- Repair expenses: Landlords must pay for necessary repairs to bring properties up to code. For small or "mom-and-pop" landlords operating on thin profit margins, these costs can be prohibitive.
- Cost transference: These increased costs are often passed on to tenants through rent increases. In some cases, the only way for a landlord to cover the costs of fees and repairs is to raise rent, making housing less affordable.
- Displacement: If a landlord is unable or unwilling to pay for costly repairs, they may sell the property or convert it to a different use, reducing the supply of affordable units. Property flippers, in particular, may purchase run-down properties, evict existing tenants, and renovate the units to be rented at higher rates, leading to displacement.
- Retaliatory evictions: Fear of landlord retaliation can discourage tenants from reporting problems, even in complaint-based inspection systems. While proactive inspection programs can help, they do not fully remove the potential for strained landlord-tenant relations, especially when faced with large repair costs.
- Discouraged investment: As profit margins shrink and compliance becomes more difficult, landlords may be incentivized to neglect maintenance or pull their properties out of the rental market altogether. Over time, this leads to a decline in housing quality and fewer affordable units available.
- Lost units: As landlords find it financially unsustainable to operate properties in compliance with strict and costly inspection programs, some units are sold or converted out of the rental stock. A 2018 study on San Francisco's rent control policy, for example, found that landlords removed 15% of the rental housing stock by converting units to condominiums or other uses.
- Fewer housing options: With fewer low-cost units on the market, competition increases, and low-income residents have fewer housing options.
- Alternative strategies: Instead of relying solely on inspections, some suggest that policies should focus on increasing the overall supply of affordable housing, offering targeted rental assistance for low-income renters, or subsidizing repairs for necessary improvements to ensure safety without unduly burdening owners or displacing tenants.
One can see the unintended consequences from rental inspection programs from this answer, and one needs only look at the Lofts on Rowe property above to see how a heavily-government-subsidized project touted by many officials as "affordable workforce housing" is anything but that. A small 400 sq. ft. one-bedroom unit will cost you $1116/month. It goes up to $1520/mo. for a 650 sq. ft. 2 bedroom unit.
If we accept the definition of affordable housing as rent costing no more than 30% of your household income, one will need to be making over $45K per year to afford a one-bedroom home here for effectively a 20' X 20' cubicle of living space. Let's cross-reference that with the average income for the area:
Unfortunately, there is no good resource to track how rents have increased since 2015 in Ludington, but the introduction of many unaffordable units into an area is obviously going to be inflationary to the housing market overall.
While it would be in the public interest to discontinue the rental inspection programs in Ludington and Scottville as it would lead to truly affordable housing opportunities as long as the stake is placed squarely in the heart of such programs, like any government program that has went bad, you can't easily get rid of it without electing people to city councils and commissions who will buck the "more government needed" orthodoxy ingrained into the various training sessions they are likely to receive after election to get them to become a 'team player'. It's definitely time to reconsider this.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by dowland on
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Great follow up X. I remember you getting up to address the committee in the city basement that was standing room only because the upstairs main meeting room wouldn't handle that large of a large crowd. Folks their knew it was about more city control and yes MORE taxes . They said only needed part time office help and the city building inspector could handle the duties.. Lies. They hired a full time office person and hired a full time rental inspector.
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Permalink Reply by XLFD on
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I looked up what I said at that meeting, where I originally figured that there would be plenty of landlords there speaking from their perspective, so I looked at it more as detrimental to the tenants, their basic civil rights, and housing affordability. I said:
"I cannot speak from the vantage point of a landlord, but my qualifications come from being a tenant and an apartment manager for thirteen years.
Under the US and Michigan Constitutions, before police can get a warrant to search someone’s home, they need probable cause of unlawful activity. But due to rental inspection ordinances already in place in Manistee and being considered here, we will permit government officials to barge into someone’s home without probable cause of a crime or even a code violation. Thanks to this rental inspection loophole, criminals who don't rent actually have more constitutional rights than law-abiding renters.
In the proposed ordinance, every rental unit needs a certificate of compliance issued by the city, which can come only after the rental unit is inspected. If inspections are refused by either tenant or landlord, a municipal civil infraction will result, which could result in civil penalties up to $500 per day for continued violation, and imprisonment for three months, by section 1.7 of the city code.
For tenants, mandatory rental inspections clearly violate the Fourth Amendment. A short intrusion can reveal very personal information about one’s religion, political beliefs, emotional or mental state, hobbies, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. Needless to say, people shouldn’t lose their privacy rights just because they’re renters. Most leases are mindful of the tenant's privacy, this ordinance has none of that. If a landlord was to conduct such an intrusive search into their tenant's unit without exigent circumstances, they could easily find themselves criminally charged by the prosecutor and civilly charged by the renter.
It should be noted that if the inspector finds evidence of unlawful activity being conducted by the tenant during a mandatory inspection, there is nothing in the ordinance that protects the tenant from the inspector notifying other agencies with such data. It should be noted that the rental inspectors would not originally have had probable cause to search and enter the property for those crimes. Owner occupied homes will not have to worry about such civil rights violations, making the proposed ordinance discriminatory and in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment also.
Offsetting any possible health or safety improvements that will come at a cost, other financial consequences to renters will be negative. Increased rents and the possibility of losing the only places they can afford because a bedroom is too small, they refuse to be searched, or numerous other arbitrary conditions that exist in the ordinance."
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I remember you stating the 4th amendment and like you had said at that meeting the protections its suppose to be for all of us. Also the deer in the headlight look from the committee members. They couldn't grasp that concept. Great keeping that speech notes. Once I found out they had to implement the inspection ordinance because of tax payers help fund the rentals being build and still help with rent subsidies to this day on Ludington Ave across from they old Michaels ,Andy's now. State funding( us tax payers) for them required the city to have a inspection ordnance. Its all a inside game. Like George Carlin said. Its a big club and we ain't in it.
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