ShawneeDispatch.com

Cracking down on owners of rental homes who let the property fall into disrepair will take some work.

The Public Works & Safety Committee Tuesday was scheduled to discuss a rental program, something Shawnee City Council members had requested to keep run-down rental properties from affecting property values of surrounding homes.

Council members previously discussed the matter at a Finance & Administration Committee meeting last November and then at the Public Works & Safety Committee meeting Jan. 16. Though they said most owners of single-family rental homes were not a problem, one of the biggest concerns of Council members was identifying rental property owners so they could be reprimanded if their properties were not up to city code.

In a comparison with other Johnson County cities, Shawnee city staff found that Mission, Merriam, Fairway, Lawrence, Prairie Village, Roeland Park and Westwood all have rental licensing programs with fees varying from $25 for any rental unit to $85 for single-family homes. Fairway had an additional $25 fee for an annual exterior inspection.

The cities of Lenexa and Overland Park both reported they were researching the issue, and Olathe said it does not have a rental program or any regulation.

Shawnee's city staff suggested three options to regulate rental properties. All included first identifying the rental properties and sending letters to property owners and renters explaining the city's regulations.

First, the city could simply perform an annual exterior inspection of rental properties, which could be done at a minimal cost to the city using current city staff.

The second option was to create a system of rental property registration, where rental property owners would pay a minimal fee to register the property and the city would inspect the property only at the request of a renter or property owner. This option also had minimal cost, but if activity and the number of inspection requests reached a certain level, additional staff might be necessary.

A rental licensing program was the final option and the most costly. This program would register rental properties with a fee of $67.50, and the city would perform annual exterior inspections as well as interior inspections for violations of the Uniform Housing Code.

The fees were calculated to cover the city's cost of running such a program, so the program's cost would be about $74,250, assuming the city has about 1,100 single-family rental units.

While the committee Tuesday could further discuss implementing such a program, results from Tuesday's meeting were not available at press time. In the information provided to the committee before the meeting, city staff recommended the first option with some slight alterations in policies for general code enforcement procedures.

In a code enforcement violation timeline staff provided to the committee, property owners would be informed of a codes violation within three business days of the inspection and would have two weeks to correct the problem. The property would be re-inspected, and if the problem still hadn't been fixed, an official notice to correct it within 30 calendar days would be sent to the owner.

If nothing had been done to the property after 30 days, the city would file a complaint with the court, and the property owner could be convicted and fined within another 50 calendar days. So from first notice to conviction, the process would take about four months.

At the Jan. 16 meeting, Council members also suggested the city make a larger effort to make the general public aware of city codes for houses. City staff reported that the city's code enforcement brochures have been updated, and information about codes will be included in the city's quarterly newsletter.