Austin City Council postponed decisions during their Oct. 3 meeting on a rental registration program focused on Hyde Park, the East Riverside/Oltorf Combined Neighborhood and the area encompassed by the North Austin Civic Association.
Councilwoman Kathie Tovo told council at a work session Oct. 1 that she will be asking for a postponement of those items to continue to craft the ordinances with the community and city staff.
"Now that [the ordinance is] broken into three separate ordinances, we have the opportunity to really make each of those ordinances a little different," Tovo said.
Tovo added that some of the tweaks she may be looking into include strengthening provisions concerning stealth dorms—homes or duplexes rented to numerous occupants.
Rental registration
Council considered a similar ordinance at their Sept. 26 meeting—a single ordinance that combined the three areas. The ordinance would create a pilot program that requires owners of multi-family rental properties within certain areas to register their business. The ordinance also would require property owners keep a list of tenant names and contact information that would be accessible to city staff.
Stuart Hersh, an Austin resident, said the city does not need amendments or rental registration to enforce its code and go after violators because the city has "all the ordinance language you need to be proactive and complain-driven."
David King, a resident of the Zilker neighborhood, said he supports both measures because the city needs to go after the bad actors it knows about and find a way to discover other bad actors it does not know about.
"Let's do both of those [programs]," King said. "Let's do the pilot test to see about how it works. That's all we're asking. Let's learn from that. If it's bad and it doesn't work, we'll stop it. But let's do the pilot test."
Councilman Mike Martinez said he supports the idea of having a rental registration program because it currently is a temporary measure.
"One of the reasons I'm supporting this is because it is a pilot program," Martinez said. "I don't know if rental registration is the answer. I know it's not the only answer, but it could be a key component."
Martinez moved to postpone the item until Oct. 3 to divide up the measure into separate ordinances distinguished by area so the full council could vote on most of the items. Cole recused herself on the item because she owns property in one of the areas.
Council will consider the rental registration items again on Nov. 7.
Enforcement
On Sept. 26, Council approved a different ordinance that focused on code enforcement at problem rental properties throughout the city. That ordinance created a directory for properties with repeated health and safety violations. The program allows for a process to suspend or revoke a rental property's registration.
Councilman Bill Spelman said he sees enforcement of the city's code and regulations as the biggest issue at the moment.
"If we can figure out how to enforce cases, even if we don't know about all the substandard conditions, at least we can deal with the ones that we know about. That meas we're using our resources as efficiently as we can, we're actually getting compliance and the enforcement we need. We're fixing the problems we know about."
Mayor pro tem Sheryl Cole agreed with Spelman that enforcement is a critical issue.
"I believe that this ordinance focuses on the problem, the problem that we know we have," Cole said. "And it's way of going about it city-wide will [hopefully] immediately start to get some relief to people who are experiencing bad actors."
