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Soften inspection law, city councilmen urge
By DAVID SKOLNICK
YOUNGSTOWN
City council members are looking at changing the rental- registration and inspection program that just started.
Councilmen DeMaine Kitchen, D-2nd, and Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd, said Monday the city shouldn’t be inspecting the major apartment buildings that already are required to be inspected annually by the owners’ lender and insurance company.
But two other members of council — Janet Tarpley, D-6th, and John R. Swierz, D-7th — disagreed.
Discussion on the program was at a meeting of council’s community development agency committee.
The city’s inspection list of 21 items requires rental properties to have, among other things, working electric and heating systems, operating gutters and downspouts, structurally sound porches and stairs and windows that aren’t cracked or broken.
The program began Sept. 7.
Maureen O’Neil, the city’s property-registration administrator, said the inspections are basic but are needed to protect tenants’ safety.
Kitchen and Brown said they received calls from major apartment building owners who call the city inspections unnecessary.
Brown called the inspections by the city a “safety check.”
The inspections done by lenders and insurance companies “seem to be a lot more sophisticated than the ones we’re doing,” he said.
In response, O’Neil said she is “simply following the law as it’s written” by city council.
“When you make a law, it has to be applied across the board,” Tarpley added.
Also, the inspections required by lenders and insurance companies may not include examining the rental units, Swierz said.
Only those who receive full inspections would be exempt from the city check, Brown and Kitchen said.
“We can keep the registration fee, but not have to inspect all properties,” Kitchen said. “If you can provide legitimate written documentation to the city that you had a thorough inspection, we shouldn’t have to require our inspection.”
The program requires rental-property owners to pay the city $20 per unit for an annual license after a safety inspection. If a property is a multifamily dwelling, the first unit is $20, and each additional unit in the structure is $15.
The city is paying $15 per inspection to Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority, which does the inspecting.
The landlords of about half of the 4,000 rental units in the city to be inspected are registered.
The deadline to register was last month, but the city is giving landlords a few extra weeks to register, she said.
All landlords should register before they complain about the program, Tarpley said.
Federal subsidized properties are exempt because they’re inspected by a government agency, O’Neil said.
Those units should also be subject to inspections, Tarpley and Brown said.
“It needs a second look,” Brown said of the program. “It’s good, but we can make it better.”
Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st, added: “Everything needs tweaking, particularly something new.”