Burnsville considers rental law changes

The dilapidated Country Village, with its broken plumbing, cockroach infestations and sagging ceilings, was the last straw.

After spending months and more than 525 hours of staff time trying to get the landlord to fix the plethora of problems at that apartment complex, the Burnsville City Council is now looking at ways to tighten its rental property licensing law.

The new approach, still under discussion, will likely include annual fees for property owners and regular building and fire code inspections.

"The apartments in Burnsville kind of have a bad image overall," Council Member Mary Sherry said. "I think this will help everybody."

The city, which has about 8,900 rental housing units, has been trying to get a handle on rental properties for years, passing its existing rental licensing law in 2005.

That ordinance grants a license, free of charge, and ranks properties in three tiers based on best practices. But there are no set inspections and problems surface only if there are complaints.

In the case of Country Village, it wasn't until firefighters responded to a fire there that residents started coming forward with problems.

The proposed changes call for fire code inspections of common areas annually and a broader inspection of each rental unit every three years.

"This is intending to be a whole different scenario in enforcement, much more direct," said City Manager Craig Ebeling.

The city would need to hire four building inspectors -- three full time and one part time -- and a part-time fire department inspector to do the work, at the cost of $379,000.

Rental properties in the city would foot that bill, likely with fees per building and per unit. Fees have not yet been set, but numbers floated at a recent City Council work session called for $125 per building and $20 per unit annually for the building inspections and an additional fee for the fire inspections.

According to city staff research, the average fee in cities that have similar ordinances is $116 per building and $18 per unit. Inspections in those cities vary from every six months to eight years.

The law, as proposed, would do away with the tiered system of ranking rental properties.

Council Member Dan Kea- ley said he was all for billing properties like Country Village that cause problems, but wondered about fees seeming like punishment to landlords who do nothing wrong.

"How do we reward that building owner that virtually has no problems?" he asked.

There weren't any landlords at the council's work session, but a representative of the Minnesota Multifamily Housing Association, a nonprofit trade group for property owners, was keeping an eye on the proceedings.

"We truly believe that we share a common goal with the city of Burnsville and all other cities of quality rental housing," said Lisa Peilen, the group's director of municipal affairs.

The group worked with the city on developing the existing ordinances and will do so again this time with the goal of making sure the final law is not "unduly burdensome" for its members, she said.

"Fees are always an added cost to our members," she said. "That's always an area of concern."

Ultimately, Peilen said, a tiered system with perks for those who comply is best.

But so far, city staff have recommended equal rules for everyone to keep it simple in the beginning. It could take as long as three years to get all units inspected and licensed under the new law.

Council Member Bill Coughlin, who prefaced his remarks by saying he generally dislikes government regulation, said he supports the changes to the rental licensing laws because Burnsville has so many aging apartment buildings. City staff members reported significant time invested in six problem properties in the past decade.

"This is a problem that is now our problem," he said.

Council Member Dan Gustafson said spreading the fees across all rental properties was the most straightforward way to start, at least until the city gets a handle on where there are problems.

"These inspections are very important to the safety of our community," he said. "Everybody shares in that cost of doing business."

Katie Humphrey • 952-746-3286