Maurianne Adams, Phil Jackson, Rob Morra (Building Commissioner)
The Rental Bylaw Implementation Group heard a detailed report this afternoon from Building Commissioner Rob Morra on the implementation of the new Amherst rental registration and permit bylaw which went into effect January 1st
Originally it was thought the town had 1,570 rental properties that needed to comply, but after a mailing to all of them Morra reports a number of phone calls from homeowners who should not have been on the list.
After the dust cleared, about 1,300 properties remained. So far just over 1,000 have paid the $100 fee, filled out the forms and received their permits.
18 have already gone before the Zoning Board of Appeals for a parking permit or to remove a "owner occupancy" condition on their original Special Permit and another 40-50 remain in the pipeline for Zoning hearings.
But that still leaves around 250 who are not in compliance and do not seem interested in coming into compliance. Next week the town will send them a "more formal notice of violation" with a short two week time frame for coming into compliance.
If not, the Building Commissioner will issue fines which will be enforced by Eastern Hampshire District Court.
Morra reports that the 250 outliers are almost all "absentee owners" and that local well known landlords have been extremely cooperative, as has the Zoning Board of Appeals with rental housing related cases.
Amherst police Chief Scott Livingtone has agreed to work with the town's Information Technology department to allow Noise and Nuisance tickets and arrests to be made available on the Amherst Rental Permitting page of the town website. Morra hopes this will happen over the summer.
Currently the database only includes building code and zoning violations. Considering the impetus for the entire permit system was the noxious influence party houses were having on neighborhoods it only makes sense to include police data.
Vince O'Connor, a 40 year Amherst rental tenant
The Committee also heard from Town Meeting member Vince O'Connor, who filed a petition article (#42) to, "suspend the operation and enforcement of the bylaw" until after a new more inclusive committee is appointed by the Moderator consisting of 8 Town Meeting members -- four of them tenants (but one has to be an undergrad student) and four homeowners (at least one a rental housing owner).
In other words a do over.
O'Connor has now amended the article to take out, "suspend the operation and enforcement" of the bylaw and the new committee of eight would simply review the current Self-Certification Checklist and make suggestions to the Town Manager, Select Board and report to Town Meeting in the Fall.
Morra and three-out-of-four members of the Rental Bylaw Implementation Bylaw Group, while remaining polite, did not seem overly impressed with Mr. O'Connor's idea.
13 comments:
As a casual viewer- I'm thinking Vince and Helen would make good friends (if they aren't already)
I do wonder what a Federal court would say relative to the ability of the town to interfere with existing contracts.
The Constitution was explicitly written to preclude that -- to make it a Federal-only authority because that is part of what Daniel Shays tried to do
I received one of those notices from the town & since my home is owner-occupied with no renters, I just ignored it. I am sure I am not the only one in this position who did so.
What annoys me is that we pay $100 for a 2-person apt and Townehouse, Rolling Green, etc. all pay $100 for multiple apts.
The by-law is another waste of time and money by the town of Amherst. They call it pubic safety but it is really about noisy college students. If the town had more integrity they would call it what it is. "We are sick of reckless absentee landlords and reckless students" Now we are going to make everyone pay for the few bad apples.
If they town had enforced really serious fines on the landlord last year who clearly was putting students in danger by stuffing kids into his apartments then maybe things would change. A $3000 fine to a large landlord is an inconvenience. Fine him $30,000 and you will get his attention and the attention of everyone like him.
It is towns like Amherst they give the hyperbolic right more ammunition to claim America is becoming a socialist dictatorship.
Amherst consider growing a set and stop creating more bureaucracy that wastes everyone's time.
It's $100 people. Get bent. If you own a rental property, you can afford it.
With so many troubled student rental properties in Town, this is needed.
Hopefully it will give the neighbors of these houses a little relief, while protecting the housing market in Amherst.
Boy, Abe Lincoln is really trying to shake things up again, huh. He should emancipate himself from local government and perhaps update his colonial getup.
I got curious and looked up my neighbors who rent. Two are not listed as a rentals and the other shows a parking plan that is, in reality, parking on a mud pit. Also, no contact info listed. Oh well.
As a small landlord, I totally agree with May 1, 2014 at 9:03 AM, I pay $200 a year for my two small properties, but PUFFTON VILLAGE pays only $100 a year. This is absurdly unjust.
And the town had many, serious ways to ticket and fine tenants and landlords, but hardly used them. Now, all the "good" landlords whose properties never caused problems are being penalized. And the absentee landlords and the management companies who would sign a lease with a dead dog are still happily doing their thing!
If they town had enforced really serious fines on the landlord last year who clearly was putting students in danger by stuffing kids into his apartments then maybe things would change.
If they had arrested him and his wife then things would have changed damn fast -- trust me.
Who endangers human life more -- Suzy Sophomore with her loud party, or Lincoln Real Estate with their illegal bedrooms? I'm not asking who's more obnoxious, but who's more likely to kill someone???
Remember that they are "illegal" because there is no way out of them if there is a fire -- and people have died, in Amherst, because of this.
Also, who endangers the life of an Amherst Police Officer more -- I doubt officers particularly enjoy dealing with Suzie's drunken and quite obnoxious guests, but the officer's life is not placed in imminent jeopardy.
Now a police officer going into a burning building in an attempt to awaken/evacuate everyone and who winds up himself trapped in an illegal bedroom will die -- will die because the slumlord permitted that to be used as a bedroom and the officer went in to rescue the people sleeping there.
Bluntly, the officer's dead. What the slumlord's doing is putting officer's lives in greater peril than what Suzie's doing -- so why is she the one arrested????
Why are college kids being arrested for something that is far less serious than this is???
A $3000 fine to a large landlord is an inconvenience. Fine him $30,000 and you will get his attention and the attention of everyone like him.
The bigger problem is that fines (like the property tax bill) will be indirectly passed onto the tenant as a rent increase. Landlord view such things as a business expense, and I think can even deduct them on the income tax return.
The mistake the town made was not publicly backing the students. There are a bunch of things the town could have done -- renting substitute (legal) housing, using a subjugation process where the town (and not the students) pay for the substitute housing up front and then the town collects the money from the landlord -- or puts a lien on the property.
The town doing something like this would be noticed by the slumlords and it would be noticed by the students as well -- it would have been taxpayer money well spent (and money which you'd get back, with interest & costs, anyway).
Want to end things like the Barney Blowout? Back the students a few times on things like this, take the students side against the slumlord when the students are in the right, and you will have a far less antagonistic relationship with the students....
If you want a friendly relationship with them, and I'm not so sure folks do...
As a small landlord, I totally agree with May 1, 2014 at 9:03 AM, I pay $200 a year for my two small properties, but PUFFTON VILLAGE pays only $100 a year. This is absurdly unjust.
It also is unwise.
What will happen -- over time -- is that things like this will cause the small landlords to sell out to a consolidated larger corporate landlord who will have the ability to bully the town in a way that the individual owners never could or would.
Think Staples versus AJ Hastings -- I'm picking these just because both are companies that sell office supplies, think of both as generic corporations. Whose lawyer would you be more afraid of? If the town had the same issue with both, which one do you think the town could bring into compliance first?
"...management companies who would sign a lease with a dead dog" is not an expression I've heard before. Thank you for expanding my lexicon.
By the way, don't pull this POOR ME crap. Pay the $200 bucks and keep milking the unfairly-high rental rates in this area. You people get away with murder when it comes to earning a buck on the backs of tenants.
Ed, you said,
"Remember that they are "illegal" because there is no way out of them if there is a fire -- and people have died, in Amherst, because of this."
When exactly did this happen?
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