Though the vote did not come without opposition, the Albert Lea City Council on Monday approved the reworked rental housing ordinance — six months after the original ordinance was first introduced.

On a 5-2 vote, with councilors George Marin and Al Brooks voting against it, the council voted to implement the new ordinance, which is set up to “protect the public health, safety and general welfare of the citizens of Albert Lea” who rent housing, it states.

“I think this is a good ordinance,” said 5th Ward Councilor John Severtson. “I think this is time to be put in place.”

He said since he was first elected, it has been one of his main goals to try to get a rental property ordinance. He’s worked on it for two or three years, and it was on the back burner until recently.

First Ward Councilor Vern Rasmussen said what the issue comes down to is the lives of the people living in the rental properties.

Not one person’s life should ever be lost because of a hazard in a property, Rasmussen said. And though the repairs required by the ordinance will cost money, it is not something he can vote against, he said.

“It’d be tough for me to sit up here and say I voted against this ordinance because of money,” he said. “I think it’s an important thing we move forward with.”

The ordinance states that it intends “to establish a permanent mode of protecting and regulating the living conditions of the residents of the city who rent dwelling units.”

Now all property owners who choose to rent a dwelling unit will be required to obtain a license before doing so and have an inspection of the premises prior to renting. Then, subsequent inspections will be conducted, depending on the results of the previous inspection.

It has been an issue up for debate since it was first introduced last March. Many cities in southern Minnesota have similar ordinances.

After an outcry of people against the original rental ordinance in April, the ordinance was tabled indefinitely to rework it with a task force of landlords, tenants, Realtors, property managers and city staff.

Members of the task force met six times to rework the ordinance. At their last meeting, 11 out of 12 task-force members approved the most current version of the ordinance, on the condition of having a tenant registry in place.

The opposition

During the Monday meeting, the opponents of the ordinance argued that the timing of the ordinance was a bad one, as the community and the country is in a housing slump.

Landlord Joe Attig said he has several rental houses in town and just this week, as he was doing some maintenance of one of his properties, one of his renters asked him why the city would come in and inspect their unit, as it would be taking away privacy.

Attig challenged the city councilors to look at their own properties and make sure they were passing before making judgments on others’ properties.

Landlord Scott Knutson said he’s been invested in real estate for more than 20 years, and he’s never seen a worse time to go through an ordinance like this than now.

With fees, the costs of rents would have to be increased to a price many will not be able to pay, he said.

“Considering the bad economic times, if this goes through, it shows poor judgment on everyone who votes for it,” Knutson said.

Opponents also showed concern over the fee schedule that goes with the ordinance, which has not been passed by the council. Fee schedules are usually passed separately toward the end of the year.

This was one major problem for 3rd Ward Councilor Marin and 6th Ward Councilor Brooks.

Marin said city staff have told him a fee schedule is usually passed separately, but it is still something that bothers him.

Brooks agreed. He said it makes common sense to pass the fees together with the ordinance, that way the landlords would have more of an idea what they’re getting into.

It also bothers him, Marin said, that the city impose a fee on the landlords if the firefighters and workers in the inspection department are already getting paid to work their jobs.

He said he thinks the council should hold off on the ordinance until a fee schedule is in place and the housing market is in a better position to handle the ordinance.

From the beginning with this ordinance, it seems that a good number of landlords got the impression that the ordinance would be passed even no matter how much things were complained about with it, Marin said.

“I don’t like that our citizens feel that way about government,” he said.

Rasmussen pointed out that at the recent preagenda meeting, the council strongly discussed allowing the landlords to come in and register their properties and in return having their initial fees waived.

Landlord Troy Ranum proposed that instead of having the inspections fees, the city should simply have licensed landlords with no inspections.

“We can’t afford these fees no more,” Ranum said.

He said he’s had two renters tell him if their rent was raised, they’d move out of town.

Six out of eight of his renters would also not allow the city inspectors into their homes anyway, he said.

Another landlord, Mike Carstens, shared an experience of an apartment he lived in right after high school when he was in college. He paid about one-third of the cost of what everybody else was paying, he said.

“I’m really glad the city council of that town did not choose to protect me,” he said.

He was “teetering at the point of just barely getting through,” he said. And if he had been paying as high of a rent as everyone else, he didn’t know if he’d have made it through.

People of many instances may be at a point in their lives where they need to rent, he said. They could be either a young person who is just out of school, an elderly person whose spouse just passed away, someone who recently had their house foreclosed upon, someone who just lost their job or someone who is a full-time student.

He pleaded that if this be funded on the backs of the renters and the small businesses of Albert Lea that it not be done now.

“Don’t do it in the middle of a housing crisis,” he said.

The proponents

Linda Bottelson, who was part of the task force and who mediated for the group, said the ordinance was first pretty hard to swallow.

“We met for many, many hours to get the ordinance at where it is today,” she said.

She commended everyone on the task force for their work in getting the ordinance to the point it is.

Lisa Frank, another member of the task force who is a renter, talked of the addage, “It takes money to make money.”

She said the ordinance needs to be passed. If it takes have an inspector come out to tell a landlord they need to fix a certain thing, then the city needs to have the inspectors come out.

Albert Lea Housing and Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Jon Ford said the community’s independent housing study identified a rental ordinance as one of the goals to work on raising up the conditions of the housing stock.

Inspection Department Capt. Mark Roche pointed out that the inspectors will be focused mainly on life-safety issues the first inspection, which are all pieces of the minimum housing code.

Albert Lea Fire Chief and Building Inspector Paul Stieler added: “The ordinance is not intended to put anybody out of business. Our purpose is not to cause hardship for either the tenant or the landlord. Obviously it’s going to cause some hardship for some because their properties are in really bad shape and need lots of repairs.”

He stressed that the department would be focused on lifesaving issues, including things like sanitation, heat and leaky roofs, on the first go-around.

“This is not an ordinance that says you have to repair your basements to brand new standards. It’s a very minimum ordinance actually,” Stieler said.

The department hopes to be able to work with the owners of the homes to fix any problems before they get to the point of condemnation, he said.

The city should see a significant increase in the housing stock anywhere between three and six years, he added.

“If you have good housing, you have nothing to worry about,” Albert Lea Mayor Randy Erdman said. “If you have bad housing, you probably do.”

Erdman said the most calls he has received as the mayor and a city councilor have been about distressed housing. Albert Lea is losing some of its lower-end housing because they have been allowed to go too far. And right now there are more homes placarded than at any time in the city’s history, he said.

The council noted that if the issue is one that has any problems it will come back before the council for a vote.

“Any landlord out there who has a complaint can bring it back to this board,” Rasmussen said.

Stieler anticipated he would have a suggested fee schedule in November for the council to review.

Look to Wednesday’s Tribune for the outcome of the other items up for vote at the Monday council meeting.