Speak out 

Thanks to the June 29 New Times Shredder ("We've got you covered ... not") for shining a spotlight on San Luis Obispo's failure to protect renters after the 2017 City Council repealed the 2015 Rental Housing Inspection Program (RHIP). Many college towns in California, for instance Santa Cruz, have a program like that one designed to protect the rights of renters who live off campus. As a proponent of the RHIP, it was especially heart-wrenching for me to hear Cal Poly political science students' compelling testimony at the June 6 City Council meeting.

They described the pervasively substandard living conditions of rental housing (for instance, rats, cockroaches, black mold, plumbing problems, missing smoke detectors, and more). They cited tenants' fear of retaliation or eviction if they dared to ask landlords for basic repairs in the face of rising rents. The students implored our City Council to do something, anything, to protect tenants, many of whom are low income or young people living on their own in residential neighborhoods for the first time.

Ironically, the students asked council to provide the very kind of protection that the city had offered in 2015 through the city's RHIP. Had the RHIP remained in effect since 2015, it is clear that living conditions for today's renters would be safer, in better repair, and more legally compliant than they are at present. However the RHIP was repealed by newly elected council members, who claimed to espouse the interests of low income and vulnerable tenants, but at the same time teamed up with landlords, property owners, and investors to defeat the program.

As the Shredder pointed out, since then, next to nothing has been put in place to address this deplorable, ongoing situation. So, the time may be ripe to consider restoring this kind of program, given the fact that present council has made diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as combating climate change, major city goals. Both goals could be significantly advanced by a new, improved Rental Housing Inspection Program. Indeed, a 2020 California Energy Commission study of 26 cities with rental housing inspection programs entitled Stop Waste identified such programs as key to reducing carbon emissions in existing residential buildings.

In California, the carbon reduction potential of existing residential buildings is enormous. Energy savings of 40 percent are within reach with cost-effective building improvements. However, in the rental housing sector, achieving deep carbon reductions is complicated because landlords often have little incentive to invest in energy efficiency when their tenants pay the utility bills. Many California jurisdictions use rental housing inspection programs as a mechanism for helping to ensure that rental housing meets basic standards for safe and sanitary conditions. To help meet state and local carbon reduction goals, jurisdictions may wish to consider adding energy efficiency requirements to existing rental housing inspection laws, or if developing a new rental housing inspection program, including energy efficiency requirements.

Even raising the issue of proactive rental housing inspection might be alarming for some landlords, property owners, and corporate investors who were able to nearly double rents since 2016 without being accountable for maintaining health and safety standards. Should they continue to be empowered to set city policy in this regard? Maybe not, if voting tenants and residents who care about implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion and combating climate change as major city goals speak up and work together to effect change for the better living conditions for all. Δ

Jan Marx is a SLO City Council member. Respond with a commentary submitted to [email protected].