SLO Council Needs to Swing for the Fences in Rental Housing Crisis 

On Monday, July 10, I watched the MLB Home Run Derby from Seattle as my favorite Mookie Betts scored "only" 11 homers against ultimate winner Vlad Guerrero Jr. in the first round.

I can dimly recall seeing Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back-to-back home runs in the 1960s. They did so 10 times in Yankee uniforms, a feat that inspired Yogi Berra to say, "It's like déjà vu all over again."

I got a bad case of déjà vu when I read Peter Johnson's piece, "Cal Poly students demand ... accountability for substandard housing from SLO City Council" (June 22). On June 6, several students laid before the council the crisis of rental housing that fails to meet minimum standards of health and safety.

Then, we learned that a major fire had consumed the Olive Street home of the Cal Poly Surf Team. The house had 100-year-old knob-and-tube wiring with a newer panel and new appliances—"not a good mix," according to the city's fire marshal. The fire broke out at 3:40 a.m. Thankfully nobody was injured or killed—this time.

I was on the SLO City Council in 2015 with former Mayor (and current council member) Jan Marx when we forged a narrow majority to enact a rental housing inspection program for our city. The inspections were based on a simple one-page inspection form, filled out by trained code enforcement staff and covering basic health and safety items like faulty wiring, dangerous plumbing, and illegal or unpermitted construction.

Term limits forced me to leave the council in 2016, just as the program had gotten off the ground. Mayor Marx also stepped down then after her narrow loss—by 47 votes—to Heidi Harmon. Within a few weeks, Harmon and the new council repealed the program.

This rush to repeal was in spite of the demonstrated success of the inspection program: In only nine months of its operation, the city had inspected almost 1,000 of the 4,500 single-family and duplex rentals in town. Only 16 percent of those rental units passed their first inspection; even after a second inspection, 40 percent still failed. Almost one-third were missing even the most fundamental safety item that's standard equipment in every home: A smoke detector. At least a third of the units inspected had faulty electrical systems, over a quarter of the water heaters were not properly secured, and one out of 12 had plumbing issues that could result in black mold or E. coli exposure.

Why was the new "progressive" council so eager to scrap the program in 2017? Politics: In the 2016 election, a coalition headed by then Councilmember Dan Carpenter threatened lawsuits and a referendum petition to repeal the rental housing inspection program. They rallied local conservatives to support Harmon's 2016 campaign against Marx, gaining the support of hundreds of landlords who disliked the idea of being required to maintain habitable rental units. They were joined by a few tenants who complained loudly about the specter of city inspectors carelessly tossing through their closets.

The premature repeal of our fledgling rental housing safety program allowed the city's substandard housing crisis to fester unabated: In late 2020, The Tribune published an investigation that exposed the abject failure of the new council's "complaint-based" system of code enforcement.

Will the City Council now reconsider rental housing safety and stand up for the vast majority of the city's residents who occupy rental housing? Several elements suggest a fundamental shift in favor of tenants' safety:

• First and foremost, current Mayor Erica Stewart is far different from her predecessor: She's a good listener and genuinely committed to using the city's resources to improve quality of life. She was responsive to the Cal Poly students who lined up at the June 6 meeting, saying, "All of us on the council want to see people be able to live in a safe place."

• Tenants—chiefly students—will also have an ally in Councilmember Marx, who regained a seat in 2020 and continues to advocate for sound rental housing policies.

• Top staff, who worked on the earlier rental housing program, are still with the City: Derek Johnson, the architect of the 2015 program, is now city manager. City Clerk Teresa Purrington was originally hired to manage the program.

As a longtime fan of Yogi Berra, I look forward to another case of "déjà vu all over again." As the council considers rental housing safety, several changes might enable it to endure a little longer than its predecessor:

• Consider an energy efficiency program for rental housing units to complement the safety inspections—as a carrot, not as an inspection "stick." Let's offer financial incentives to landlords whose units comply with our safety standards to install EV chargers, solar panels, and other energy-saving features. (Marx urged such measures in her "Speak Out" column last week)

• Team up with the Cal Poly dean of students' new Off-Campus Housing Office to enable their referral system to identify the safety compliance record of rental units and to ensure that students are fully informed about rental housing safety standards and how to file a complaint with the city.

• Shift the enforcement schedule to provide for an inspection only when tenants with an active lease approve the inspection; or when a lease term is expiring; or after five to seven years has elapsed since the most recent inspection. This would protect civil liberties and privacy.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping that every member of the council will step up to the plate and swing for the fences at the Home Run Derby that awaits them when Chief Building Official Rodger Maggio reports back to them in a few weeks. Δ

John Ashbaugh has flashbacks to 1977, when a spacious one-bedroom apartment could be rented for $240 a month. Respond with an opinion piece by emailing it to [email protected].