A bill for an ordinance establishing a system of licensing and inspections of certain long-term residential rental properties. Creates an ordinance establishing a system of licensing and inspections of residential rental properties. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 4-14-21.
All right. Thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca. And thank you, Jessica, for the answers. And we are going to go ahead and move along then. The next item up is Council Bill 420 Council Member Clark, will you please put Council Bill 420 on the floor for final consideration. As Council President and move that Council Bill 420 be placed on final consideration and do pass. Second. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded, council members say, to pocket your motion to amend. A move that council bill 20 1-0 420 be amended in the following particulars on page two. Line five strike January 1st, 2023, and replace it with July 31st, 2022 and on line 14. Strike January 1st, 2024 and replace it with July 31st, 2022. All right. We have a move. We have it moved. And I think I heard the second there is that Councilman Hines second. Okay. All right. We've got the second from Councilman Hines questions or comments by members of council on this amendment. Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you. This change is to basically bring the compliance requirement date a little sooner, a little closer to us for the rental registry. We have it bumped out in in two phases one for our multi-unit, one for our single family units. And I think we should just be creating some parity there and making them both required compliance by 2022. I think that would meet the needs of our residents in the city a little bit better. And this is something that's been raised along with my upcoming amendment by our constituents, especially having spent a lot of time talking to mom and pops, mom and pop landlords for our Right to counsel initiative. While the sooner they might be a challenge for everybody, folks really want to see parity across what we're asking of all landlords. And so this is to achieve that. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. I think you're council president. Do you know if this was the implementation date was discussed in the stakeholder process? Are you asking me or Councilmember CdeBaca? Well, ideally, I would ask you, but I don't know if there's someone else that that that has knowledge of the stakeholder process or I mean, ideally, I would ask someone who is part of the stakeholder process as opposed to having you play dual role of sponsor and council president. But if you're willing to answer it, I don't I don't want to put you on the spot. Oh, I'm perfectly happy to answer that question. Yes, we discussed the phasing in depth because this will be the largest license that we have within the city and county of Denver. And so, as you might imagine, excise and licensing would like to see the phasing because they need to get this program stood up. And it really is best practices across the nation that you don't just all of a sudden open up a license, but that you actually have an incentive period, you have a phasing in period. And it was specifically discussed among the stakeholders around what that phasing in would look like. And we based on their feedback, that is the phasing that you see in the original ordinance language because they specifically wanted to see multifamily go in first, followed by single dwelling units. So essentially with the phasing, it would allow all of 2022 and 2023 for those single family dwelling units to come into compliance and be able to pass an inspection to successfully secure their license. So is it reasonable to say that the that there are a couple of challenges here that the phasing is meant to address? The first is we're going to have time to plan and prepare and do some rulemaking, too, I'm guessing. And and then the second is for institutional property owners probably have a bit more discipline or bandwidth to consider a rental registry. And mom and pop landlords need a little more time to catch up. Am I? Mm hmm. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm also trying to be as expeditious since we are here and in the full council. Yup. You paraphrased it. Perfect. The other thing I think that folks should consider is that by having one start date, it creates a huge bottleneck of licenses that are going to licenses that are going to come in. And then upon that four year renewal, you're also going to have that bottleneck. And so I am not in support of this amendment. And I would ask my colleagues to vote the amendment down. So I'm sorry we're doing maybe this kind of work on the floor. Councilmember CdeBaca, do you have any thoughts as to what? Yeah. I mean, I hear what the concern is, and I disagree that we're setting a bottleneck date. We're giving a whole year for people to come into compliance. And I don't think that. A phasing has to be annual phasing. I think that there could be a six month phasing for one, a six month phasing for the other. We know where the multi-family units are. It's much easier for us to reach out to them and gain compliance. We also have property tax, property assessments, wastewater fees. All of those things go out directly to owners. And so we have plenty of touch points to communicate directly with landlords. And I think that 2022 is a reasonable amount of time to give them the runway we need for them to get into compliance. All right. Thank you both, Councilmember CdeBaca and President Gilmore. No further questions. Right. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Cashman. I thank the council president. Yeah. I guess my concern about moving the data is besides adding, I like the extra time for the mom and pop landlords to figure out how to address the situation. As I wonder, at the capacity of the the inspection industry and with the tens of thousands of rental units that will be meeting their initial inspection. As you know, Madam President, I, I asked you to consider on the second when when the license comes up for renewal four years down the road to consider allowing landlords to self attest. And you responded that you would certainly consider that based on whatever data we assemble from the first go round with inspections. And I accept that as a reasonable approach to the matter. But I do like the added time, not just for for the landlords, but for the inspection industry to get a rather large job done. So thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. And seen in the queue. There are no other hands raised. Madam Secretary, roll call on the First Amendment, please. CDEBACA All right. CLARK No. Flynn. Now. You know. Cashman. No. Can each. No. Ortega. Oh. Sandoval. No. Sawyer. No. Torres. Oh. Black? No. Madam President? No, Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. One I 11 nis. One i 11 nis. The amendment to the First Amendment to 20 1-0420 has failed. Council Member Sayed Ibaka Your second motion to amend, please. I move that council bill 20 1-4 28 be amended in the following particulars on page seven, strike lines six through ten and replace with each unit on a parcel is $50. All right, we have it moved. Is there a second? So again. All right. We have a second questions or comments by members of Council on this amendment. Council member State Abarca. Thank you. This amendment levies the same fee for every rental unit rather than giving large discounts to corporate landlords who have multiple units on a single parcel. Right. Thank you. We've got council member Sawyer. You're a thinks, not a president. I'm wondering whether you considered the cost that it would be that this change would be passing along in your original determination. Were you when you came up with the plan that you came up with, could you. Would you mind just walking me through that again? I think you mentioned it last last week a little bit. Or maybe, councilman, can you do but just and just curious. About. Why the two different treatments for the large property owners on the. Smaller ones? Thanks. Sure. Happy to. Thank you for the question. You know, when we started this work with our stakeholder group that we purposely seeded with affordable housing providers and affordable housing property owners, we knew that whatever fees we assess were going to be passed on to the renters. And so we needed to craft the original policy with that intent in mind that it was going to be passed on to the renters. And so that's why we kept the fees low to, one, mitigate the amount that would be passed on to the renters, knowing that renters in multi-unit apartment buildings are sometimes some of our most vulnerable renters, and that we also kept the fees low to encourage compliance. And really, when you're looking at the property owners are also responsible for arranging their own inspections that are heavily discounts that for smaller property owners because they only have one unit that they would have to get inspected versus the multifamily. They're required to have 10% of their units inspected. And so we know that that's an added cost in the thousands of dollars for the large multifamily apartment buildings. If you have 350 units, you're required to get 35 of those units inspected. And we knew that that was going to get passed on to the renters as well. And then lastly, the fees must be reasonable. This isn't a tax that we're assessing on property owners. It's a fee. And so those fees must be reasonable and they have to be supported by real costs. And the city, whatever the cost is going to be of the license program, the fees have to cover that cost, but only that cost. And so the amendment, it will generate close to $10 million. And I can tell you right now that those are not real costs that that that the program would incur. And so I don't believe that this increase meets the level of having a fee versus it really being perhaps a tax. Okay. Great. Thank you. Really appreciate that clarification. Thanks, my cousin. All right. Thank you. Council member Slayer. Council member Hines. Take your council president. Did you consider. Hi. This $50 fee and then excusing mom and pop property owners from paying a fee at all for the parcels just to, you know, so that didn't end up being $10 million collected or whatever and more equitable to the small landlords. I think I'm understanding your question. We considered a lot of different scenarios because we've been working on this for two years, and so we knew that we needed to start somewhere and that in having the fees low, you know, the application fee is $50, it aligns with the short term rentals. And then the license fee was is $50 for a single dwelling unit owner. We kept them very low and we didn't want to exempt them other than the affordable housing providers that we have in the city. Because really this is a business and they are running a business. And so we wanted them to also have to comply with the application and license fee. But again, we needed to start somewhere and we needed to make sure that the cost was low. And I believe that we've accomplished that. And if the fee is out of balance with the cost and it is considered a tax, does that mean that the entire program would be in jeopardy? I believe that there would be serious questions about the program. And I'm happy to have Jonathan Griffin, who's in the queue. He can perhaps answer that question for you. Thank you. Jonathan Griffin, deputy legislative counsel. Can you repeat the question, Councilman? Yes, sir, absolutely. The question is, the statement was that if every person was charged $50, then the amount of fees collected would be $10 million, which is well above the cost of implementing the program and could be therefore considered a tax instead of a fee. So if that is the case, if the collections are well above the the cost of implementing the program, does could that potentially jeopardize the entire program? Yes, that is correct. I mean, the program would be opened up to legal challenges. Then under the Aspen case that came out back in 2018, which spoke to reasonable fees as part of their paper bag bill. It said that the charge had to bear a reasonable relationship to direct or indirect costs of the government providing service to regulating the activity. And so if there was not a reasonable relationship within the two costs, that could be challenged. Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Thank you, Mr. President. No further questions. Thank you. Councilman Hines. Councilman Cashman. Yeah. Thank you again. Council President. Yeah, I'm struggling with this little bit. While I recognize that someone has 300 apartments and. And that the amount that they're end up paying, if I were units inspected, would would be challenging. But I'm I'm trying to I'm guessing that if that would be the case, that they would end up working a deal with with whomever is doing the inspections for a lesser, lesser fee per inspection. And and even if they were paying the same amount, the amount passed on to the renter would be the same per unit as a single family or a single unit landlord. So I'm struggling a little bit with this. While I understand the legal necessity for keeping this as a fee and not going past the cost of the program. I'm wondering if there isn't perhaps another way to to balance this. And should this pass, as you've proposed? That's another thing I would hope we would look at moving down the road. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilman Cashman, I'm happy to answer here. You need to have some sort of application and license fee to encourage compliance. If we had, you know, $10 or $1, would we have the compliance that we're looking for? And I would also ask that, you know, we don't make perfect the enemy of good policy, because we've got to start on this program and get, you know, a few years of data to understand where we're at with it. And then we're going to evaluate it on a yearly basis in July and happy to dig into that more. But we need to start somewhere. And I believe that we have kept the fees low enough that this is a good place for us to start. It's less than $5 a month that would be potentially passed on to the renters, from the property owners as we have the policy right now. All right. Next up, we've got Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President, I. I, too, like Councilman Cashman. And I'm intrigued by this. I see the intent of the amendment that Councilwoman CdeBaca has proposed is basically looking at the corporate gift of a volume discount. Essentially, I would rather, though, see the converse of this. And Council president, we have I think we chatted about this early on in the process that perhaps a single license fee for a mom and pop landlord who a family might have three or four rentals scattered around the city. I would much rather see a singular license fee for that situation than than charging the operators of 300 unit complex for each unit. And but I know that we didn't have votes to do that. And I understood the reasoning behind it that Megan had emailed to me. So but I would with this amendment, I think I would rather see the converse of it to give her the same kind of consideration to a mom and pop it that just managed, you know, a handful of rentals around the city. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn, Councilmember CdeBaca, we have you back up. Yeah, I echo a lot of what Councilman Cashman and Flynn have said. I proposed early on the converse or a fee based on rent and what am I bracket? The landlord was catering to so that we can incentivize low rent and disincentivise predatory rents. I think that while sometimes our multifamily units are providing affordable rates, we also have many of the multifamily units providing our luxury rates as well. And so my my issue here is that. It's not about the the $50. I think the $50 is a reasonable fee. I if we're not trying to generate that much money, we could go lower. My issue here is treating landlords equitably. We're not. We're not we don't actually have a fee that's tied to something rational, like square footage, like parcel, like rent. It's very arbitrary. If you look at the fee brackets and while Jonathan mentioned that we could be sued if we raised over the a couple hundred thousand dollars that we're trying to generate and we used it on something other than administration of the database, we could be sued because that could be perceived as a tax. I wonder, Jonathan, if you would be willing to speak to the potential of a lawsuit by small landlords who feel that their fee is not rational in their being and there a fee is being imposed on them that it is not being fairly imposed on other landlords by unit. Yeah. My understanding is that there was a study done on this. So again, that was why it's not considered a tax is that there is a reasonable relationship to the costs and that there was a study done to make sure of that. It does not appear in the method you're prescribing that there would be a study done. Can you explain how the fee is reasonable for the single unit provider versus the multi-unit provider when in reality a multi unit provider would be able to take advantage of economies of scale and would be able to absorb the $250 easily and pay for the, what, 30% of the inspections. Whereas you have an individual owner who is less able, less likely to be able to absorb that that fee, but also less likely to be able to absorb 100% of their inspections. Because even though we're giving the multifamily units 30% of their inspections, the single family unit is still required to pay for 100% of their inspections. I mean, I can always kind of speak generally to what's defined as reasonable on the law. Both, you know, there's a long line of cases of, you know, from the US Supreme Court under the 14th Amendment as well as Colorado Analog in our Constitution. And there's heavy deference granted to the legislature and the lawmakers when they're setting their fees. So if there is something so I mean, in my mind, this fee would be found as reasonable. But yeah. But what is the definition of reasonable? The I mean, the kind of the major definition when we're talking about excessive fines is that the fine has to be grossly dis support, just proportional to the gravity of the offense or of the charge. So this would need to be that's kind of the general standard for reasonableness under the Supreme Court. Is that grossly disproportionate? And is there anything in there about equal application? Of the fee. Is there anything? I'm sorry. I'm not following your question. So $50 is reasonable. And I say that as a landlord and somebody who's rented $50 is reasonable. The issue is not the fee. The amount of the fee. It is the application to others in the same business. It's like killing me. It's like telling me I have to pay $4 for a gallon of gas. But somebody who is filling up a tanker gets to pay $0.25 for that same gallon of gas. I'm not aware of anything that's looked at the tier structure and made that type of determination. And again, the basic standard of grossly disproportionate, you know, is what's looked at. So, no, I'm not aware of any anything that's ever looked at a tiered system and said that one tier was was unfair to another tier. Got it. And Councilwoman Gilmore, can you explain what the Fed ties back to in the tiered system? Because I I've gone through it and tried to see, you know, could it is it attached to square footage? Is it attached to the the single parcel? Is it attached to rent? I'm not finding the thing that the fee is attached to. Can you help me understand that? Sure happy to. The and I and I would love to also remind folks that the increased requirement of unit inspections and so we're only talking right now about the license fee. We're not talking anything about the cost that we know, again, will be passed on to the renters. It's the inspection fees. And so through the stakeholder process, it was a non-negotiable for the stakeholders to waive any sort of inspection requirements. And so we have the inspections across the board, but it is tied to the cost of the program and to administer it. And we knew that we needed to start low. And so we started with $50 for one unit and went up from there, basing the criteria on the number of parcels that we had that were in the 2 to 10 scenario, the 11 to 50 and the 51 2 to 50 scenario, because we wanted to have a good overview of what it would take to administer this license program based only on fees, and then also take into consideration the cost of the inspections that we knew were going to be required and that would be passed on to the renters. And so that was the criteria that we looked at for the program. The application fee is in alignment with the short term rental program. It's $50, and that covers the administrative costs. And so and the application fee is a one time fee. It is not needed to be paid upon renewal. And so that is the rationale. And we have worked very, very closely with excise and licensing and our partners to ensure that this we weren't gouging anybody on this, that we were really taking this into consideration and across the board being able to implement this and pay for the program as well. It's still not explaining how it connects to the landlord. I hear that there was a overall amount that was determined and then we backtracked to figure out how we would raise that. And I don't think I'm going to get the answer I'm looking for anyhow. But I've also been asked several times through our right to counsel proposal, how our proposal would interface with citizen led ballot initiative that's out there that proposes essentially the right to counsel the rental registry and the fee. Can you talk to us a little bit about how if the citizen led ballot initiative passes, this will interface? I don't have a crystal ball. So there will be limited interface, at least initially because, you know, we're standing up this program and we need to get it. We need to get it implemented. The citizen led ballot initiative, those funds raised will truly be a tax. And through that ballot initiative, you would need to identify where those dollars went to and how they're collected because of the tax for any fees for this proposal, anything that is revenue generated will go directly into the general fund and then it will be reallocated through the annual budget process. Got it. Thank you for that. That's it from my questions. All right. Thank you. Up next, we have Councilwoman Connie. Thank you. Council President I really appreciate the dialog. I just wanted to share two sets of observations and in terms of how I'm going to vote on this amendment. The first is that I frankly do a lot, as you all know, of housing stuff. And I get to spend time with economists and and I think a lot about housing prices and what impacts them and what doesn't. And I will just say there's a pretty large body of research that demonstrates that program costs like these do not get passed on a dollar to dollar to tenants. And we have this discussion a lot in the inclusionary housing realm. But the reason is that, generally speaking, in a marketplace, the seller is selling at the highest possible price the buyer can pay or will pay. And so generally speaking, you know, if your fridge breaks in your rental unit in the middle of a of a year , you don't get to raise the rent to replace the fridge because one, you have a lease. Two, you have your tenant may be at the top of what they can afford because if you could be charging more for that unit, you probably would be already. Right. And we've seen this in this market, right. That landlords will just continually raise the rent to the most that they can get for the quality of that unit, the location of that unit, etc.. So there's a lot of economic research that that will say that the cost of this program may not get passed on dollar for dollar. They may end up getting absorbed partially through, you know, reduced profits, partially through reduced other things that, you know, maybe landlords spend a little less than something else, landscaping, whatever. But the short story is that that these costs get spread over over a range of things. But the good news is, if I'm wrong, if the economists are wrong and the landlords are right when they say dollar for dollar, every dollar is getting passed on. That's why these fees are low. So that's why this is a prudent approach, right, to entering the marketplace with a new cost. So. So but I just I will just say I personally do not I side with the economists that generally speaking, dollar for dollar, not every cost does get passed on because generally the rents already at the top. So be that what it may, that's just more for your academic stimulation tonight. The second thing I wanted to mention in terms of what councilman would say to back is asking what's the basis? And the basis is the parcel. And I'll I'll share two reasons why I think that is appropriate for a starting point here. Number one is there are many things we do by parcel. So, for example, I send one property tax bill to an apartment owner. I don't send 300, but I do send one property tax bill to every single family home, regardless of who owns them. If they own 200, I don't send one bill to 200 different single family homes. I send one bill to each parcel. So there are a number of things we do in the city that we regulate by parcel. So this is consistent with some other ways that we do things as a city. Secondly, even though it would look it would be more like a tax if we were doing it based on value, which is why, as much as I might value wise, like the idea of charging by the price, that's just it looks and feels a lot more like a tax than a fee, especially if the unit doesn't cost the government more to regulate. So the but but you will I will say that the average value of a single family home or a townhome is going to be greater than the average value of an apartment. So if your concern is that you want folks who are owning, I mean, the value, if you were to evaluate a medium single family priced home or a duplex or even the ones that are being rented, you know, might be in the 3 to $500000 range, whereas the average value of an apartment might be in the 200000 to $400000 range. So they are just they are qualitatively value wise. Unit four, unit not the same. And the single family unit is worth more. So that's just a fact. It's not the basis why it was chosen, but it is a piece of why it may be more equitable than you think. You know that we think not you, any one person, but just that we might think off the top of our heads. The last thing I want to share is I do want to caution us from this assumption that every single family home out there is owned by a mom and pop. In fact, it is a massive business of equity funds to purchase, particularly during the foreclosure crisis, massive quantities of single family homes that were packaged on a resale market. There is an entire campaign to get the Federal Reserve and the folks who are engaged in this selling of, you know, bad mortgages to offer them first to community organizations. But that's a slow campaign. And the truth is big capital owns many single family homes. So I just want us to be cautious about any assumption that a single family home is necessarily owned by a neighbor. It's not to say that that's not. The case, right. There are definitely some some individuals who owned single family homes. But I would guess that when the data comes in, we'll learn more about how many are owned. Even the LLC can be confusing, right? It might look like 12 different LLC, but they all have the exact same partners in them. So it'll be very interesting to see what we can glean from the data. But so, so I respect the concerns, but for the reasons I've identified, I will be supporting the bill as is and not voting for the amendments. Thank you, Madam President. Q Council member. KOINANGE And I will go ahead and make my final comment. Thank you for the for the questions of my colleagues. And I respectfully ask that my colleagues vote down or vote no on this amendment. Madam Secretary, roll call on the Second Amendment. CdeBaca I. Clark No. Flynn. Now. HINES. Oh. Cashman. I believe you're muted, Councilman. No. Can each now. Ortega? No. Sandoval. No. Sawyer. No. Torres. No. Black? No. Madam President. No. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. One 811 days. When I 11 nays the second amendment to 20 1-0420 has failed. Council Bill 20 1-0420 is on the floor for final passage. Questions by members of Council on Council Bill 420. Give it a moment here. All right. Councilmember Flynn. And just for folks, we will have questions first and then we'll follow by comment. So wanted to split those up. So if anybody has questions, now is the time. All right. I'm not seeing any questions. And so we will go ahead and move on to comments by members of Council on 420 and Council member Flynn. Did you want to get up first in the queue? Go ahead. Sure. Thank you, Madam President. Yeah, I didn't have questions. I just had a comment. I wanted to amplify the same remarks that I made last week that I want to request that when rulemaking occurs on this, particularly with the the guardrails on inspections, that we'd be careful not to that this registry and the inspection process not turn into an accelerant for displacement, particularly when some of our older housing stock in our very vulnerable neighborhoods are vulnerable to displacement. That is, that we not end up incentivizing the owners to sell and have redeveloped into unaffordable, particularly unaffordable duplex or or McMansion type of a development that we keep these affordable rentals in the pool with inspections that truly look at the standards for habitation safety, life safety and that sort of thing. And not with an eye toward older houses that don't meet current building codes and never can if we required them to upgrade would would simply be taken off the rental market. And so that's that's my that's my direct not to I can't give direction to the department, but that's my request of the licensing folks and the inspection folks that we truly make it targeted toward habitability and life safety. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn. Councilmember Sandoval. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to echo what Councilman Flynn said. I have received a lot of feedback from constituents in Council. District One who. Owned smaller or not even smaller, but older homes and a lot of older homes in historic districts, too. And so they have a lot of concerns that their hallways won't make, won't meet the inspection standard. They have concerns that just a lot of concerns with older homes. So I had mentioned to you when we spoke about this, about having historic Denver as part of a partner, because if you are a member with historic Denver, you get a group, a list of contractors who've been vetted through historic Denver who know how to work on older homes because, say, for instance, if somebody has to add an egress window into their older home, you cut into the foundation. It's a little bit different type of building stock. And there's there there's programs out there's people out there who know how to do it. And one thing I do want to comment on is that you don't have to wait until the very end. If you own single family homes to get the $50 permit, you can rent, you can get it earlier, which is a $25 permit. And as I mentioned to you, council president about having an inspection preemptively, that's something I'm a rent. I own a rental property. I've been thinking about doing and I've been telling my constituents if they could get an inspection preemptively. So preemptive so that they know what to fix and they have a couple of years to fix it. So there's don't the the cost don't get passed down to the small mom and pop owners, because that's mostly all I've heard from in Council District one are people who. Own several different. Single family rental properties, and that's their concern. I haven't heard much concern about the actual need for the rental registry. Most of the concerns that my council office has heard from is the inspection. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Sandoval. Councilmember Sawyer. He's not a president and they appreciate what Councilman Sandoval just said. I hear the same thing in my office, and I think that's spot on. And I think the determining factor in really making the decision here is the costs that are passed along to the renters as it stands now. I think the financial estimates that we were provided indicate the average cost of the proposal is $4 per unit. And so to me, that balances the city's interests in protecting our most vulnerable citizens and maintaining safe housing stock with the recognition that our residents simply cannot bear that many more costs given COVID and market conditions and all of those things. So the intent of the proposal is to make housing safer and more accessible to all. And I think that adding too many costs to that will dilute the proposal by significantly raising the rents in our city, increasing the barriers to housing affordability. So I'm in support of the rental registry this evening as a whole and will be in voting in favor of it. Thanks, Madam President. Thank you. Council member soya. Council member. Each. Thank you. Council President I first just want to say thank you to you and your staff as well as to the agencies. This was no easy feat to get a set of city agencies willing to take on a task this large. And I think it's critical. So I want to thank them for their willingness to move and grow and and think about meeting the new needs that we've identified in our policymaking work here in the council because we rely on them to implement. And so so thank you to everyone who participated. For me, I think about this policy as a piece of a trajectory that we in Denver have been on as we have grown up as a city. And I don't just mean up in size. I mean up in complexity, up in being a major destination for businesses to relocate with workers. You know, I don't know if the Cowtown reputation was ever really deserved by the city of Denver. I think it was always dynamic and it always had things. But to the extent that we are unquestionably a modern city, that's a world class destination, it is natural that we have to grow our systems to manage that city in ways that we didn't have before. Right. And that meant banning forms of discrimination like use of source of income. That was the first renter protection that was passed four years ago by the city council. And since then, we've continued to look at ways that we can address evictions with eviction defense programs. We try to add the first rental assistance program that was available beyond those that were the deepest, lowest income. We used to have a human services program only. But each of these pieces is part of a trajectory, along with the requirements that we've been able to negotiate with developers. And we may be considering requiring in the future that when you have a city of this size and this complexity and frankly, with the exacerbated inequality that has come, then these are the mitigations that are needed for us to manage that city. And so I do just want to share one perspective. I know that we've heard about the landlords who shared concerns, and that's understandable given the change. But I want folks to know that I'm also hearing from landlords who are supportive. One of them is an elder African-American woman who owns several properties in the city, who reached out to our office to say that she was very supportive of this. And Ms.. Davis, this is what she said to me. She said, I pay these fees in other places. It's no big deal and it's really good because I want landlords to be responsible. I don't think it's fair to have people in this city who are not doing what they should be because they don't have anyone checking on them, whereas everywhere else they do business. I have to pay these fees and you know, and I know that at least it's a level playing field. So I think that's really important for the landlord who invests in their life and safety systems and make sure their unit is safe. They shouldn't be competing with someone who's not investing in those things. So I just wanted to share a different landlord perspective that we haven't heard as much about, but certainly is out there. And that is someone who supports this ordinance tonight. So I want to thank Ms.. Davis for reaching out to my office, and I want to thank my colleagues. And I'm excited to vote yes on the evolution of our city into a more equitable and more managed place. Thank you. Thank you. Council member can each council member. Tories. Thank you so much, Madam President. Appreciate the work that's gone into this in responding to a number of emails from District three landlords. You know, we were emphasizing that this is a basic responsibility of a city, the size and depth of Denver, that we know what our rental stock is and that it meets basic capitation rules. Even when we looked at vacancy rates in the past in Denver. The number was misleading because it only calculated vacant units that had been previously occupied, not newly built vacant units that have never been rented. We should know what our stock is and who's responsible for them. My district was, when described by Councilman Kasich earlier, about single family homes that have turned over to investors, and we know very little about them or how many they own. One of our partners wrote this in their letter of support. As with so many things, COVID 19 has brought to light the importance and benefits of maintaining a central record of our community's rental housing stock. Various federal, state and local level renter protections and resources came online in an effort to keep people housed through this public health crisis. It would have been incredibly helpful to have current contact information for rental property owners and operators sort of enabled clear and efficient communication of still evolving policy changes and affordable rental assistance funds to the benefit of landlords and tenants alike throughout the pandemic. That was from enterprise community partners. I look forward to voting in favor of this tonight. I thank you for all of your hard work as President Gilmore and Kimmage even before I came into office on this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Torres. Councilmember Cashman. Thank you. Council President First of all, I want to thank you very much for considering the the tsunami of questions that I have sent your way. And thanks to you and your staff. And I am absolutely convinced that you've been as thoughtful as is humanly possible in creation of this policy. I still have some questions that I'm you know, I'm concerned about, you know, the that we still may be putting too much burden on some of our smaller landlords. And I'm thinking maybe it's in the those that have like 2 to 10 different parcels of single family homes. And so I'll be looking at that. But, you know, I want to be sure and I appreciate Councilman CdeBaca bringing up this question to be sure, where we're spreading the burden fairly. So I'll be looking at that. I think I'm 100% convinced of the importance of creating this rental registry. And I think as as Council Pro-Tem Torres just said, being able to contact our renters and our landlords with important policy changes coming down the road and I think having an as accurate a number as we can put together of rental properties to help us in, in a crafting policy down the road, I think is is critically important. You know, I we can't leave that complaint based. I've heard from a number of people that we've got the state warrant of habitability. We've already got things on the books, but they all require a renter to file a complaint, which puts one way or another puts their welcome mat in in their residence at risk. And so I support the inspection, the preemptive attempt to create safe housing. I do, again, have concerns about that. The the inspect, the inspection list, the checklist that every every landlord I've spoken to, I would say easily 80% of the landlords I've spoken to, that's their concern. And I've tried to put their mind to rest as best I can. But I have concerns myself. I'll be at rest when I see that final list along with my landlord. So I hope to, you know, keep keep an eye on that, be as involved in that as as I'm welcomed to be. So with that, I will be supporting this. I think you're exactly right. You know, not only is it not wanting to ruin the good by striving for perfection, but I think the way it's set up, the phased approach gives us a lot of time to arm wrestle over some details that I think are important in this. And again, thank you and thanks to you to your co-sponsor for the effort to put this together. Councilwoman Kenny just. I think it's fair to say, been our our council champion, at least in my time on council for affordable housing and safe housing. And I appreciate her efforts as well. Thank you. Council President. Thank you, Councilmember Cashman. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I, too, want to express my appreciation for the two year process that you've been through by engaging multiple stakeholders to get input. And that reflected change along the way, including during the time that you brought this to before council. And that means you were listening and really took into account all of that input into this final bill that's before us tonight. I also want to just express that during the rulemaking process, when that comes up, that will be really important to keep us informed about when that comes up so that we will probably hear from people during that time frame as well. And I want to just extend my appreciation to all of the constituents that we've heard from on both sides of this issue. I think the fees are something we're going to have to monitor to ensure that it's not something that continues to grow over time. As we all know, when the Platform Park Hill project came forward, those wastewater fees were originally created to identify impervious surface that people had on their properties, and that was expanded to include the cost of the plaque to Park Hill Drainage Project, which, you know, taxpayers across the city ended up helping bear that cost as opposed to it being placed on each individual property. So it's why getting those annual reports to city council will be really important to monitor. And like with any ordinance, if we find that there are things that need to be tweaked over time, it gives us the ability to see what the reports are showing us and to make whatever necessary changes going to have to be made in the future to the ordinance. Obviously this is targeted to focus on habitability and life safety issues. And I think one of the challenges we're going to have is making sure that there are enough inspectors that can handle the volume of the inspections that will need to occur. And you and I have talked about the fact that there are organizations out there that provide the certification for those inspectors. And this is a great opportunity for people who are unemployed that can go out and get a license to be I think it's a license or a certification to become an inspector so that anybody who is unemployed can can have a new profession. This is going to be an ongoing process and a great opportunity for them to tap into this. So overall, I appreciate the work that you and Megan and folks from the city attorney's office and Dottie and Councilwoman Leach and others have have put into bringing this forward. I think in general, having that registry is going to be extremely helpful and it will be helpful as we continue to look at any policy changes that allow us to figure out how we continue to create that affordable stock that has varying price points for people in our housing market that are below what is considered market rate housing. Thank you very much. Thank you. Council member Ortega. I was thinking about Stella Madrid. We've got to get Stella in the the home inspections gig. As you were talking. Thank you. Councilmember Ortega. Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President. I thank you for the bill and for all the hard work you, your staff, and your stakeholder process and all the stakeholder members have put into this topic. I'm just a council member. Cashman. I agree with you. I'm concerned that we're, uh. I just want to make sure that we're continuing to use our equity lens as we move into rulemaking, assuming this passes. And I look forward to having a list of our property owners. After all, the city's relationship is with the property owner, not the renter. And I want to make sure we have someone other than a registered agent in some out-of-state LLC. When a renter has concerns or when we need to discuss health, safety and welfare issues like snow abatement or a navigable right of way, including our sidewalk, which is the adjacent property owners responsibility. And to councilmember, can you just point we are an increasingly, increasingly complex city downtown or not? We're now one of the largest, 25 largest cities in the nation. I like that. We're getting more information about our housing stock, including long term rentals. Frankly, we should probably get more information about our short term rentals, too. The data collection helps us understand what we have in Denver so we can better shape policy for our future. Thank you. Council President. Thank you. Councilmember Hines, Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you. I thought I was never going to get calls on my head, kept getting put down for some reason. I just wanted to share that. While I do not believe that the fee is being applied equitably or even equally, I do wholeheartedly support a registry. I think it's critical that we're able to track our landlords and our rental dwelling units within the city. I do want to echo what my colleagues have mentioned about wanting to be informed about the rulemaking process. I think it's going to be really important for the long term for us to create a data system that in the long term can be useful to the average citizen in Denver. There are other cities who have had nonprofit organizations who are in the process of creating their own usable databases for citizens. And so what I hope can happen with this database is that, one, we can infer, integrate, violation and complaint data in a in a map that can be interacted with in real time. I also hope that this can become a resource for landlords. Not all landlords are looking to exploit their renters. And I think that when there are good resources available for a landlord like we've experienced throughout COVID, with rental assistance, with property tax rebates, those kinds of pieces of information struggle to find landlords. And I think that this eventually can be a very helpful tool if we make it that. And so I hope that we're very intentional on creating something that's usable for everybody and not just a system for us to hoard information internally at the city. And very excited to support this and see what comes next. I hope that any landlords who feel like we've crossed some line here or have work to do, I hope you all will get engaged and help us shape the 2.0 version of this legislation. Because always remember anything that we pass here can be undone by us or by the citizens. And I encourage all of you to take government into your hands and make sure that it's working for all of us. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca. All right. I see no other hands raised. I'll go ahead here and want to thank all of my colleagues for all of your questions and your comments. You, my council office and I, along with affordable housing experts, providers and owners, we have been working for the past two years to address tenants rights and protections. And for the first time in Denver's history, we will have significant renter protections through the healthy residential rentals for all license. We have thoroughly researched and crafted this policy to mitigate concerns of unintended consequences to tenants, such as fees being passed on to renters or displacement. I'm proud of this policy and it is well researched, fair and equitable. I'd like to acknowledge and sincerely thank my two council co-sponsors. Council President Pro Tem Torres and Councilwoman Robin Kinney. Megan Allen's my chief of staff. Thank you for all of your hard work on this. You were tirelessly you you were tirelessly in your persistence in making sure that we could get good answers to the great questions posed. And also Melissa Sotelo in my council office and Emily Lapel, our legislative analysts who did our early research. I'd like to also personally thank Tiana Patterson from Elevation Community Land Trust, Kate Steen Stig Berg excuse me, Stig Berg and Michael Reddick from Healthier Colorado. Aubrey has filed from Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Kenzie Halstead and Katie McKenna from Enterprise Community Partners and Tonya Pringle from the city of Boulder and our amazing city agencies and staff who are truly experts and collaborated on this policy. Reggie Ngubane, who wrote this ordinance. And so blogger Kirsten Crawford and John Griffin from our city attorney's office. Molly Duplass. Shane and Erica Rogers from Excise and Licensing. Melissa Totty and Nick M Heiser from our Department of Housing Stability. And Julie Sapp. And John Keeler from the Climate Action Sustainable Resources Office. Tara Olsen. And Will Fenton from the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. And all of the additional agency staff members who joined our stakeholder group to share their expertize and knowledge. We had a lot of help in crafting this policy, I must say. Denver has been in a housing crisis for decades, and the pandemic has put even more uncertainties on our residents who rent. For the first time, we will have a license that will ensure our rental properties are safe and meet Denver's housing standards. We'll collect that basic property owner information as well as important rental data to enable us to broadly share resources with tenants and strengthen our tenant, landlord education and outreach. The phased in proactive rental license program, where inspections are required and done routinely every four years, will help identify issues and protect the health and safety of tenants more efficiently. This shifts the burden of code enforcement from relying solely on a tenant complaint to a more prevention based, equitable approach to improve housing quality. In partnership with Councilwoman Connie. Additional renter protections include a requirement starting on January 1st, 2022, that renters have a written lease for all new tenancies exceeding 30 days. That rental owners and operators provide a notice of tenant's rights and resources and provide them again if there's any demand for rent. The Colorado Center on Law and Policy, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of Coloradans experiencing poverty excuse me, are in support of this policy from Jack Regan Brogan, their senior attorney. This proposed ordinance would establish a meaningful process for ensuring a minimum degree of health and safety in residential rental properties by allowing for regular inspections of rental units. The proposed license program would more equitably standardize health and safety protections for residential tenants. In short, it is no exaggeration to say that this program would quite literally save lives. Many times during this process, people have asked me, why is this so important to you? Well, it's important to me because if it's happening in my community to renters, for example, that Green Valley Ranch property that we've used as one of the most egregious violators with black mold, exposed electrical wires, etc., then it's happening in all of our communities. It's personal as well. We will, for the first time be able to collect data on how many rental units are ADA accessible. You see, my dad is an incomplete quadriplegic. He had a car accident when he when I was 22 years old. And he uses an electric motorized wheelchair for everything that he does. Parking accommodations and more data are important to make sure that we're supporting those in our community. And also because for a short time, my husband and I lived in a rented mobile home. Every time it got down below freezing, the pipes would freeze. We didn't have water. We had a brand new baby. But I couldn't make formula. We couldn't wash our hands. We couldn't wash our dishes. We couldn't even flush the toilet. Hearing renters voices and their stories. Their experiences have all supported the need for this rental license, with required inspections to ensure that property owners understand clearly their obligations if they are going to rent a property in Denver. Last I asked you to think about how important your home was to you and your loved ones over the past year. How important was it for your children who when they were learning remotely? Or if you're a caregiver for a vulnerable family member. Our homes became our sanctuaries. Every renter in Denver should be afforded the right to know that their rental unit meets the minimum housing standards, along with the requirement of a written lease and access to tenants rights and resources. Thank you to my colleagues for your support and I respectfully ask for your vote this evening. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 21, Dash 0420, please. Black. Hi. CdeBaca. I. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Hines. I. Cashman. Hi. Can each I. Ortega, I. Sandoval, I swear. I. Torres, I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes Council Bill 20 1-0420 has passed. That concludes the items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Clerk, Will you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes. Council President. I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. Four 4426 For 14 or 15 for 16 or 17 for 18. 388. 389. 436. 438. 279. And 151. Second. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. Hi, CdeBaca. I. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Hi. Hi. Cashman. Hi. He needs. Hi. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. Hi, Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. 12 eyes. 12 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 21, Dash 0309 changing the zoning classification for 1450 South Humboldt Street in Washington Park.