Modesto to discuss program to inspect rental housing

Modesto leaders are expected to discuss Monday a proposal to inspect rental housing to ensure it meets basic health and safety standards, including being free of vermin and having working plumbing and heat.

The proposal is part of a city report to be presented at the City Council's Safety and Communities Committee. The meeting is open to the public. The committee will take no formal action; only the full council can do that.

The report details other steps the city could take to deal with rental properties before they become unsafe and includes a summary of how the city responded last year to the crisis at 624 Ninth St., a two-story building of 28 studio apartments (one was for the husband and wife who managed the property) that rented for about $585 a month, including utilities.

The building was in deplorable condition, which included mold, rats and cockroaches, rotting bathroom floors, holes in walls and floors, and faulty plumbing and electrical. Despite its wretched condition, it provided affordable housing for poor people who did not have better options.

The city has said it condemned the building after the owner failed to make repairs. The tenants eventually were forced to leave, but the city worked with social service providers to help find housing and other services. The city also paid for temporary storage for tenants' belongings, motel rooms and deposits for new housing. That cost about $33,000, according to the city report.

The city had the building boarded up and secured in September, but it caught on fire a month later. The city then razed the property. Officials have said the city could not determine the cause of the fire.

The property is owned by Turlock residents Noma and Steve Arakelian. Steve Arakelian has said that some of the tenants were responsible for the property's poor condition, though a city report points to a lack of maintenance over a number of years.

Tom Trimberger — the city's chief building official — said other cities have established rental housing inspection programs. He said Modesto could conduct an inspection every three years and property owners without problems could self-certify that their properties were in good shape. He said the program would be funded by the property owners, but the fees would be low.

Trimberger said the inspections could apply to all types of rental housing, including single-family homes and apartments, but said properties where the owner lives on site (for instance where a homeowner rents out a room) would be exempt. Properties in the Section 8 program also would be exempt because they already are inspected.

Trimberger stressed the inspections would focus on the basics to ensure a property is habitable and would not require owners to bring older buildings up to today's standards.

The report to the Safety and Communities Committee did not find fault with the city for not identifying the problems at 624 Ninth St. sooner, despite frequent visits from police officers responding to calls for service and fire officials conducting annual inspections. The report also details several code enforcement actions at the property over several years and assumes workers from child protective services, adult protective services and other agencies visited the building.

Trimberger said the city did not have processes in place to deal with systemic problems with a property. He said police officers and others who visited the building were focused on their tasks at hand and lacked the training to know when a building might not meet habitability standards.

Trimberger said the code enforcement cases dealt with individual apartments and specific problems and not the building as a whole, though the city report states there was a May 2012 code enforcement case that appeared to be about the entire property because it was about "unsafe building maintenance conditions."

City officials are proposing other reforms, including training service providers, which would encourage a "see something, say something" approach about potential problems and educating tenants about their rents and landlords about their responsibilities. The city also could expand the role of its beat health unit to include this issue.

The committee meets at 5 p.m. in room 2005 on the second floor of Tenth Street Place, 1010 10th St.

This story was originally published April 8, 2018 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Modesto to discuss program to inspect rental housing."