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Eager to learn more about the city’s evolving rental landscaping, the Palo Alto City Council enthusiastically backed on Monday the creation of a registry that will require all local landlords to provide information about rents, vacancies and evictions at their properties.
In doing so, however, it left one critical question outstanding: What should the city do with the data once it’s collected?
Council members generally agreed that the information in the new rental registry will be valuable when it comes to crafting new policies to assist tenants, who now make up about 47% of the city’s population. When the program rolls out next summer, landlords would be required to register their properties and to then notify the city after significant “events” such as evictions and unlawful detainers, legal actions that landlords can deploy to get tenants to leave.
But when it comes to enforcement, city staff have proposed a relatively light touch. Citing insufficient staffing, Planning Director Jonathan Lait said the current plan is to only enforce the registration requirement. This could mean imposing daily fines on landlords who fail to register and who repeatedly ignore the city’s notifications.
The city would not, however, enforce violations of renter-protection laws, Lait said. That, he said, would be left up to private rights of action in civil court.
“We believe it’s a substantial amount of effort to begin an enforcement mechanism of our rental-protection programs,” Lait said, noting that it would require the creation of a new regulatory framework.
Some council members, however, argued that this isn’t good enough. If knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon supposedly claimed, Palo Alto should use its new power to crack down on landlords who illegally hike rents or evict tenants, as evidenced by the data in the registry.
Vice Mayor Greer Stone and Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims both fell into this camp and made the case for more enforcement. Stone, who is a renter, emphasized the existing power imbalance between landlords and tenants and said he was uneasy about having the city simply look past violations.
“I struggle with the idea that we’re just kind of going to sit back, see that, and we’re not going to be able to do anything with it,” said Stone, whose motion to advance the rental registry advanced by a 6-1 vote, with Council member Greg Tanaka dissenting.
Lythcott-Haims similarly pushed back against the minimalist approach to enforcement proposed by planning staff. She was undeterred even after City Attorney Molly Stump suggested that enforcing disputes between tenants and landlords would effectively require the creation of a new unit of city government.
“We know staff is maxed out, we know this is a brand-new thing and yet if we were really to put our money where our mouth is and properly address the concerns that this rental registry is designed to facilitate an understanding of, we are going to need to allocate staff and budget resources to this,” Lythcott-Haims said.
Others were less gung-ho about enforcement. Council member Ed Lauing argued that the goal of the rental registry should be to obtain information. Without understanding the local rental market, it’s hard for the city to develop an accurate staffing model for enforcing rental protection laws, he argued.
While the city may discover other things over the course of the exercise — such as, for instance, the existence of old accessory-dwelling units that don’t comply with current building codes — Lauing said he would not support going after landlords in these types of situations.
“I’m not interested in going after people who were not in compliance with something 40 years ago,” Lauing said.
The council had focused on information rather than enforcement two years ago, when it identified the creation of a rental registry as its top priority when it comes to tenant protections. Housing advocates, including members of local groups such as Palo Alto Forward and the Palo Alto Renters Association (which is now being absorbed by Palo Alto Forward) and the nonprofit SV@Home, have also consistently highlighted the data-gathering component of the program as they lobbied for its implementation.
Amie Ashton, executive director of Palo Alto Forward, suggested that the registry will help the city make more informed housing policy decisions.
“Without good data we can’t have good policy,” Ashton said Monday.
Others were far less excited. Numerous landlords and property managers spoke out against the registry on Monday, characterizing it as onerous and unnecessary. The new program would require them to fill out a four-page questionnaire and pay an annual fee of about $50 (the fee would be waived in the first year).
Leannah Hunt, a local Realtor, suggested that the registry is unnecessary because staff already have access to copious public records with information about rental properties. She lamented the fact that housing advocates are treating the rental registry would be some kind of a “panacea” for high housing costs.
Marcus Wood, a local property manager, took issue with the the idea that landlords in Palo Alto are taking advantage of tenants. He said that in his 10 years of managing about 200 apartments, he only had two evictions, in both cases for tenants who didn’t pay their rent.
“The intent sounds good but the registry really won’t make any difference,” Wood said. “The program seems to be based on anecdotes about certain landlord transgression and the need to protect one or two helpless tenants.
“The city seems to be promoting a solution in search of an unidentified problem.”
Tanaka shared this view and argued that the rental registry may deter some would-be landlords from renting out their homes, apartments or accessory dwelling units. The city should not implement broad policies without clearly demonstrating the necessity, he argued.
“Let’s not rush into regulations that might have unforeseen negative impacts on our housing market,” Tanaka said. “I believe this proposal will actually decrease the rental stock in our community and make the homeless issue even worse.”
The rest of the council, however, strongly supported the new registry. Mayor Lydia Kou, a Realtor, noted that listings on services like Zillow and MLS (Multiple Listing Service) offer only partial information, particularly when it comes to rentals.
“I do believe having this rental registry will provide the city with a lot of information and I think it’s necessary given the climate we’re faced with, especially with the housing (mandates) that ask us for more and more production of housing but it really doesn’t trickle down to more affordability,” Kou said.
Council members also supported Lait’s proposal to gradually roll out the registry by initially focusing only on properties with three or more apartments. This means limiting the program in its first two years to the roughly 300 property owners who own about 70% of the city’s rental stock. Those who own one or two rental units wouldn’t be required to register until the third year of the program.
The council’s Nov. 27 vote directed Lait to return at the end of the second year to evaluate the program’s expansion to the smaller properties.
Lait said starting with the larger properties (and the relatively few property owners) will allow staff to work through all the program’s kinks before the broader rollout to the many property owners with one or two units.
“It’s a new program. While we have some familiarity with some registry programs such as the business registry, we believe there will likely be a learning curve as we adapt to the system,” Lait said. “We have every intention of it working smoothly from the outset but we also suspect that there may be some glitches or some technological issues that we need to sort out.”
The council also directed planning staff to survey the enforcement mechanisms that other cities use to encourage compliance with renter-protection laws. In the meantime, Council member Vicki Veenker suggested that the registry itself may deter some landlords from flouting rental laws.
“It might be self-enforcing to some degree,” Veenker said. “Even if we move someday toward enforcement, hopefully there will be less instances that we have to deal with.”