Cal Poly students demand rent control, accountability for substandard housing from SLO City Council

As they struggled with their own rental housing issues this year, a group of Cal Poly students decided to walk door-to-door in San Luis Obispo to find out if they were alone.

After knocking on hundreds of doors and interviewing about 100 students living in off-campus neighborhoods, the group said they got a clear answer back.

“The student housing crisis runs deep in this town,” said Diego Cervantez, who spoke alongside his peers at a SLO City Council meeting on June 6.

Mold and rodent infestations; blatant building code violations; unresponsive property managers; absentee landlords; and consistent rent increases were among the common experiences that the student group documented.

“Rent is only half the problem,” Cervantez said. “One student had so much black mold in their room that went unaddressed by the landlord for so long that they had to move out halfway through the year.”

“There were a lot of people who expressed to us that not only were the maintenance staff not being very responsive, but their landlords in general were making them pay for items such as mice and rodent cleanup,” added Tyler Coari, a second-year student and canvasser. “Rather than their landlord taking the initiative to deal with the problem, the student was forced to pay. It took many months to get resolved.”

Eight Cal Poly students in all addressed the City Council on June 6 during the meeting’s general public comment period to share both their own personal stories and the accounts of those they surveyed.

Across her five years as a SLO resident, recent Cal Poly grad Hailey Powell said she’s experienced “various uninhabitable living conditions” and several rent increases.

“My new rental unit has a large slew of issues,” Powell said. “I thought I was sick the last two months because of allergies—it was actually black mold growing on my ceiling. And my landlord’s known about it for at least a month and hasn’t done anything about it. … Just because students are young renters doesn’t mean that they should be able to be preyed on.”

Several of the students who spoke called for the council to strengthen its code enforcement programs and consider adopting a local rent control policy.

“I cannot see the living situation for students being sustainable in this town for much longer,” Cervantez said. “The city must act to curtail out of control rent and code violations that go unenforced every single day.”

Student Noa Tuliau added that a lack of enforcement, combined with SLO’s highly competitive rental market, creates an environment where property owners don’t have an incentive to provide good service.

“There are a lot of students who feel like they just have to deal with the service, and it leads landlords to become comfortable with their lackluster services,” he said.

Tuliau added in an appeal to the council that, “it’s gotten to the point where compassion and lending an ear, while valued, is just not enough.”

“We need action,” he said. “We need tangible changes to the city’s standards and the quality of housing services here in the city.”

After the conclusion of public comment, SLO Mayor Erica Stewart acknowledged the student testimony and said she empathized with their experiences.

“Part of the reason why I wanted to be at this dais with my colleagues is I, too, have experienced the black mold and very uninhabitable spaces to live in,” Stewart said. “All of us on the council want to see people be able to live in a safe place.”

Stewart then asked city building officials to respond to the comments.

Community Development Director Michael Codron spoke and encouraged tenants whose landlords are not maintaining their properties to code to contact the city’s code enforcement hotline at (805) 594-8188.

“A call to that hotline number with a complaint will result in a call back and a scheduled inspection based on the situation and the call,” he said.

In a subsequent interview, Codron told New Times that the hotline does not generally see a high call volume—closer to one call per month than one per week. As of now, that’s the only mechanism the city has for rental housing enforcement.

“What we’ve tried to do over the years is ensure that the residents in the community know who to call and feel confident in raising their voice if they’re living in a situation they don’t think is safe,” Codron said. “We as a building and safety department have responsibility to ensure that people are living in a safe environment. We take that seriously.”

SLO has taken other measures over the years to try to address substandard housing. In 2015, the City Council passed a mandatory rental housing inspection program for all single-family and duplex units. But backlash from property owners led to program’s repeal in 2017.

In addition to the hotline, Codron and Deputy Building Official Michael Loew highlighted a department staff position created in 2018 that’s tasked with developing a “safe housing outreach and education program.”

But the position is currently vacant, so the program’s development has been “put on pause.”

“One of the ideas was to develop a registry of safe houses, meaning that landlords willingly allow code enforcement officers to come in, inspect, and certify their residences as ‘safe’ according to city standards,” Loew said.

Codron—who’s retiring from the city at the end of June after 26 years in SLO—acknowledged that the quality and high cost of rental housing has been a long-standing issue in the community. He expressed confidence that the City Council understands the significance of it.

“We’re committed to implementing a successful program here,” he said. “Those cases and students who shared their stories with the City Council, we know they’re not the only ones out there” Δ

Assistant Editor Peter Johnson is signing off for the last time after nearly eight years at New Times. He’d like to thank readers for continuing to support local journalism. Send your news to news@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Jun 22 – Jul 2, 2023.