Order for a hearing to review Rental Unit Conditions, Standards, and Inspections in the City of Boston. On motion of Councilors Breadon and Edwards , Rule 12 was invoked to include Councilor Bok as a co-sponsor.
Thank you. Docket 1024. Councilors Braden and Edwards offered the following a lot of for a hearing to review rental unit conditions, standards and inspections in the city of Boston. Thank you. The Chair recognizes the district councilor from Brighton, Councilor Liz Braden. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move to suspend Rule 12 and add Councilor Baucus, a third original co-sponsor of Docket zero 1 to 4, please. Councilor Brayton seeks suspension of Rule 12 and the adoption of Councilor Baucus original co-sponsor. Seeing no objection, Councilor Brock is hereby added. Please proceed, Councilor Braden. Thank you and thank you to my colleagues, Councilor Edwards and Bach, for their partnership on this issue. This hearing order is to invite the Inspection Services Department to review and the enforcement to a municipal code covering inspection and re-inspection of rental units and rental dwelling unit standards. We have just concluded the annual rituals around in September, the rental lease renewal turnover cycle and colloquially called Alston Christmas. And I've heard from a significant number of Alston Brighton tenants about rental unit conditions and questionable compliance with city regulations. We must review the city's current property registration and inspection practices, and my concern is not so much with the inspection and registration of exempted property owner occupied units, but particularly with larger corporate and absentee landlords who have become chronic offenders, allowing violations to pile up and having the means to pay off a fine after a fine without actually improving living conditions in their units. Under current rental unit registration practices, larger multi property owners have not are not required to disclose information of all individuals and entities with business ownership interests. The public does not have any meaningful way or convenient access to rental unit registration registry information, making it difficult to hold chronic offenders accountable. This conversation will be an opportunity to check in with ESD on the tools and resources that they need to implement better solutions to effectively rein in bad actors and to take advantage of the current. And they take advantage of the current system in order to improve living conditions. And we really need to use the system to improve living conditions for renters across our city. Thank you. Thank you very much. The chair now recognizes the first original co-sponsor, Councilor Lydia Edwards. Councilor Edwards, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Mr. President. This has been one of the most consistent conversations I've had since I've joined this body, and that is where working with Estee to figure out that the laws that we have on the books are actually getting enforced. And I remember and many of the budget hearings, we often ask, Do you have the Resources Council? Flynn asked, Do you have the Resources Council clarity? Do you have the resources to enforce the new laws? And I think this is just a check in about that, especially as we're in the middle of a transition and we're dealing with more and increased rental units. But we also are wondering if they're really complying with the law. I think we recently just had a wonderful conversation or introduced a hearing order for making sure that property owners are being held accountable. We want to make sure that their rental renters are actually being seen and being tenants that we even know where they exist. I think at the end of the day, one of the best things we can do is have a robust list of all the rental units, know the conditions of them in the city of Boston, so that when we go to push new policy, we're able to add one email or one mass mailing, genuinely get to all the tenants and landlords at one time. And having worked at the Office of Housing Stability, oftentimes that was the way in which we used this list. It wasn't just assess fines. It was honestly to communicate. There is a pandemic. There's a new law about how you need to file your notice to quit. All of these different things are more efficient if we have a role. Best list that is up to date. And honestly, I think the ability for ESD or any of the city department to check in and get to all of the all of the excuse me, the apartments in the city is also been a growing not so much concern, but something we still continue to work on. We're still trying to actually get through the first level, I think, of inspecting all of the units in the city of Boston. So we're excited to just not criticize, not throw under the bus, but really figure out honestly, how are we going to do this together as a team? Thank you. Thank you very much. The chair now recognizes the third original co-sponsor, the district council from Beacon Hill. Councilor Bach, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, Councilor O'Malley. And I'm really proud and pleased to be joining Councilor Brayton and Edwards on this. I think thinking about last week's filing, in this week's filing and sort of taking that two track effort, because on the one hand, I think we would get more problematic property owners attention if we enacted what we talked about last week, which is an increase in municipal fines. But in the meantime, we've got you know, we want to pursue that, but we also want to use the tools that we have to hand now. And I think that, you know, I came from a Problem Properties Taskforce meeting this morning in Mission Hill. And I just think that again and again we run into the issue of, okay, in theory, there's this thing on the books, but has I followed up? Where are we? And I think a lot of the housing inspection materials specifically are still kept on paper in a way that can make it really hard to to have that bird's eye view that helps us get at the bad actors. And and I think we just have to all recognize that it's you know, there's been a lot of conversation about how tenants get squeezed by rent rates. And that's very true and real and real pressure. But also, like tenants get squeezed when, you know, there's lots of hidden fees. They're having to spend a ton of their time to harass their landlord to get a basic thing that's supposed to come as part of their apartment. You know, they're living with the stress, like, you know, the bad health conditions of a substandard unit. So there's a lot of ways that the power imbalance of a landlord tenant relationship can affect the lives of the majority of Bostonians who do rent besides besides just rent. And I think that it gives our our responsible, good landlords in the city. You know, it frustrates them to no end. I know as well, I'm on the property task force call with a number of them in Mission Hill. And I think that, you know, everybody in the community loses when we've got landlords who feel like they can just ignore these complaints and these real, real quality of life issues for Bostonians and and not have it go anywhere. So really looking forward to this hearing and hoping that we can figure out how together we use our existing regulations to escalate things more effectively and solve more of these problems. So just again, want to thank Councilors Edwards and Creighton for their partnership on this. Thank you, Councilor Buck. The chair now recognizes the district council from South Boston. Councilor Flynn, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. President. And please add my name. I just want to say thank you to the Makers for sponsoring this important hearing. I think Councilor Edwards said it best, as we also need to make sure we have the inspectors that will actually go out and do the work and inspect the properties, including Airbnbs. These are a lot of quality of life issues, but I think it's upon us as a city council during the budget process. We just can't we shouldn't accept any more from department heads that they have the necessary funding in their budget. We have to push back a little bit on that. No city department wants to come down here and say they have all the necessary funds to do their job because that's not accurate. We need to be more aggressive as a body, myself included, in pushing back in and saying, No, you don't have enough money to do inspections and that you need more money and to do this job right, we have to make sure the money is in the budget so these inspectors, as inspection inspectors, can go around and do their job, whether it's checking on tenants or doing Airbnb related issues. But at the budget process, process it's critical that we fund. These programs and services. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Counselor Flynn. Would any Madam Clerk, please I. Counselor Ed Flynn as a co-sponsor. Any further discussion on docket 1024? Would any councilors wish to add their name? Madam Kirklees at Councilor Arroyo. Councilor Baker. Councilor Campbell. Councilor Side B George. Councilor Flaherty. Councilor me here. Please add the Chair's name to Councilor Wolf and docket 1024 will be referred to the Committee on Housing and Community Development. I'd now like to invite Councilor Campbell to please take over the dais. And as she comes up, Madam Clerk, would you please read docket 1025.1025?