North Canton pursues rental registration requirement for small landlords

NORTH CANTON — After nearly a decade of stops and starts, North Canton City is moving forward with a plan to require certain landlords to register their rental properties with the city.

Director of Administration Patrick DeOrio said during a council meeting this week that the registration will help protect the health and safety of residents by holding landlords accountable, while some council members said the registration would help the city ensure that all residents are paying appropriate local taxes.

"It's about the health, safety and welfare," DeOrio said. "It's incidental to me that we're going to find out about income tax. It's incidental to me that I'm going to find tenants that are running businesses out of these apartments. It's going to be incidental to me that the property values are increased."

Council voted 5-2 in favor of the second reading of the legislation. It would require property owners with eight or fewer units on their premises to apply for a renewable rental license from the city with a fee of $100 for single units, $150 for two units, $200 for three units and $50 per unit for owners with more than three units.

Prior to issuing a license, inspections would be required and would be carried out by SAFEBuilt, which the city already contracts with for various building permit and code enforcement services. Landlords can undergo up to three inspections to receive the license, with chances to remediate any violations between each inspection.

'The fees are nominal for crying out loud.'

The duration of the rental license — and thereby the need for repeat inspections — depends on the number of violations found during the inspection phase of the licensure process. For instance, property owners who are found to have fewer than two violations will receive a three-year license, while those with more than nine violations will be able to get only a six-month license.

"The fee is paid every time a landlord applies for, or renews, a license and the term of the license is based on the number of violations at the third inspection (if the property needs three inspections)," council Clerk Ben Young said. "The hope is that by giving landlords the opportunity to correct violations before they negatively impact the license term, most issues, especially minor ones, can be resolved quickly without any penalties."

Proponents of the legislation on council said the registration will help them to know how many rentals are in the city and where they're located, which could help them determine whether local taxes were being paid. The inspection data could help determine if there are certain needs in rentals that the city could help with, such as lead or asbestos abatement.

"I manage properties from my parents — they're getting up there in age — and I for one am totally fine with a little bit of extra scrutiny and a fee," Ward 1 Councilman Jamie McCleaster said. "I think it makes everybody safe. I think it proves that the quality of the house is there. I mean the fees nominal for crying out loud."

Realtors oppose registration, claim it is 'not needed'

In North Canton, about 35% of housing is renter occupied, accounting for nearly 2,600 units and with a median rent of $834. The other 65%, or 4,800 units, are owner-occupied, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Rental owners are currently required to file their properties with the county, but at-large council member Daryl Revoldt said few do, and even then the county only requires contact information about the property, not inspections. He said the council randomly selected 15 of the 100 North Canton rentals registered with the county and found that three of them had nuisances recorded in the last three years.

Kayla Atchison, governmental affairs director for Stark Trumbull Area Realtors, said her organization feels the legislation will discourage renters and discourage people from becoming landlords.

"Obviously it increases costs to landlords, and more likely than not that those costs are going to have to be shifted in order to make doing business, as in operating units, profitable,” Atchison said.

She said she would prefer to see the city stick to external inspections only and enforce current ordinances regarding noise complaints or other tenant-driven complaints to manage housing.

"If there's issues with the exterior, then there probably are issues within the interior," Atchison said.

Both the Realtors group and the two council members who voted against the proposal took issue with its limited scope in applying only to landlords with eight units or fewer. Council members John Orr and David Metheney both said they were supportive of rental registration overall, but would like to see it applied to all rental owners equally.

DeOrio said that at the current funding and staffing levels in the enforcement department, the city needs to start with the limited proposal before scaling up.

Rental registration protects tenants, advocates say

Rental registrations are not uncommon. Surrounding communities, including Akron and Youngstown, make use of them.

Community Legal Aid managing attorney Andrew Neuhauser said they’ve been useful to those communities in helping identify issues in the rental market for city governments and determine how to allocate resources.

He said that in Summit County, registration was required for landlords to receive CARES Act assistance, and landlords can't move forward with evictions unless their rentals are registered.

"We've never heard complaints from tenants that the inspection process is invading their privacy or anything like that," Neuhauser said. "In most situations, the inspections only happen if there is a complaint about the condition of the rental property."

Neuhauser said his organization, which helps low-income Ohioans access legal assistance, has fielded about 100 calls from North Canton since the start of 2021 for help with housing issues.

The ordinance will be read and voted on once more at council before it is approved.

Sam Zern can be reached at szern@cantonrep.com or 330-580-8322. You can also find her on Twitter at @sam_zern.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Small landlords may need to register rentals in North Canton