Stricter housing standards, higher penalties on the way for Charlotte landlords
Charlotte landlords will soon face higher fines for code violations at their rental properties.
Effective Jan. 1, landlords will be subject to a $100 per day fine if they fail to fix code violations. Currently, landlords may be fined $100 initially, with a $10 per day fine as long as violations continue.
City Council on Monday approved in an 8-3 vote the new fine structure as well as higher housing standards, such as stricter requirements for properly installed doors and windows, safe lighting and ventilation, and working plumbing and heating.
“We want to be sure that every place is a safe place to live regardless of where it is and regardless of who owns it,” said council member Justin Harlow.
“We can’t totally prevent bad actors and bad landlords from being bad actors and bad landlords,” he said. “But these changes, I believe, do make that more difficult.”
For months members of the council’s neighborhood development committee discussed amendments to the city’s minimum housing code. On Monday, several council members said they support strengthening housing regulations but worried the proposal doesn’t go far enough.
Council member Dimple Ajmera was one of several to highlight the situation at Lake Arbor Apartments, which has sparked months of debate over how to best address and enforce the city’s minimum residential standards.
Residents of the west Charlotte complex complained for months about safety and sanitary conditions. City inspectors later inspected all units and found dozens of violations. This summer, Lake Arbor management told all renters they must vacate so owners can renovate the complex, forcing hundreds of people to search for a new home.
Council member Braxton Winston, who voted against the changes Monday, said the amendment wouldn’t prevent another large-scale problem like Lake Arbor.
“This does not get to the heart of some of the main problems,” Winston said.
Without broader fixes to code enforcement, Winston said, the vote Monday would just be political cover for “elected officials to say, ‘We did something’...when presented with a problem.”
Council members Winston, Ajmera, and Matt Newton voted against the amendment, all saying they felt there was more that could be done.
Winston had proposed an alternate motion to pass the amendment and also send the matter back to the committee to further discuss additional code changes, but that motion failed.
This work was made possible in part by grant funding from Report for America/GroundTruth Project and the Foundation For The Carolinas.
This story was originally published October 15, 2019 at 12:53 PM.
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