Form revised February 4, 2010

FISCAL NOTE FOR NON-CAPITAL PROJECTS

Department:	Contact Person/Phone:	DOF Analyst/Phone:
Legislative	Michael Jenkins 5-1674	NA

Legislation Title:

A RESOLUTION relating to rental housing and the City’s efforts to improve the quality of rental housing, requesting that the Department of Planning and Development report back to the Council by February 1, 2011 with recommendations on implementation of a rental housing inspection program.

· Summary of the Legislation:

The resolution requests that the Department of Planning and Development report to the City Council by February 1, 2011 on their recommendations concerning implementation of a rental housing licensing and inspection program. The program, adopted under Council Bill 116857, sets forth the terms of a rental housing licensing and inspection program affecting rental properties throughout the City, with limited exemptions for owner-occupied housing, subsidized housing, and other specialized housing types. The resolution requests DPD to develop a report to Council, in consultation with stakeholder groups, on at least 12 different issues affecting the implementation of the rental housing licensing and inspection program.

· Background: (Include brief description of the purpose and context of legislation and include record of previous legislation and funding history, if applicable):

The City has a longstanding interest in the preservation of its rental housing stock. An initial program to regulate rental housing was adopted in the 1980’s but was overturned in a series of lawsuits in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The current model reflected in CB 116857 follows a program developed and implemented in 1997 by the City of Pasco, requiring landlords to obtain a business license to operate rental housing and to submit a certificate of inspection from a City or private inspector certifying that the rental units met applicable code standards as a condition of obtaining the business license. The Pasco program successfully withstood challenges to the Washington Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal and serves as the model for the program outlined in CB 116857.

In 2007 the City Council again considered implementation of a rental housing inspection program and commissioned a study to gauge the effectiveness of the City’s approach to housing code enforcement. The report, authorized under Resolution 31031, recommended that the City enhance its existing code enforcement efforts by seeking State legislation to secure inspection warrant authority, in lieu of adopting a Pasco-style program.

In 2010 the State Legislature passed SSB 6459, which follows the model developed by Pasco, but included significant limitations on a local government’s ability to require a certificate of inspection from landlords and the types of rental housing inspection programs local jurisdictions can enact, and will prohibit a local jurisdiction from enacting a rental housing inspection program unless the program complies with the restrictions contained in SSB 6459 and is adopted prior June 10, 2010.

The City Council intends to adopt a rental housing inspection program prior to June 10, 2010 (with a delayed implementation date), so that the City can tailor a local rental housing inspection program based on local needs rather than the restrictions contained in SSB 6459, and can then amend, as needed, that program to reflect those local needs.

This resolution requests that DPD begin to address the issues with implementation raised under Councils’ review of CB 116857.

· Please check one of the following:

__X__ This legislation does not have any financial implications.

The work required under this resolution is expected to be performed under existing budget resources provided to DPD. It is expected that the work required to develop the report will require approximately .5FTE, distributed among existing staff, estimated at approximately $32,000 in personnel costs (i.e., salary and benefits), excluding overhead. This may require reallocation of existing staff time and resources from other projects under DPD’s work plan.