Rent Ideas Ready for Council

The Rental Licensing Task Force held its fifth and final meeting Tuesday night at the Chapel Hill Public Library to fine-tune the Rental Licensing Program proposal that the group will present to the Chapel Hill Town Council later this month.

The licensing program is a complaint-driven system that task force members say will be used to help enforce the existing Chapel Hill Housing Code.

Town Council members, residents, landlords and renters make up the task force. The members decided not to support a proposal that recommended reducing the number of unrelated people who can live together legally from four to two.

Brittany Whitesell, one of two UNC students on the task force, said students should be happy with the group's recommendation.

"The proposal is a good thing from a student's perspective because it didn't make the existing housing codes any more strict," Whitesell said. "The idea of limiting the number of tenants is not addressed in the proposal, and that is beneficial for students."

Affordable housing was not the only issue the task force was considering. Permanent town residents also raised concerns about noise, parking and trash problems and both landlord and renter accountability.

The licensing program would require property owners to officially license any property they plan to lease. To obtain licenses, property managers and landlords would be required to certify that their properties meet the town's Minimum Housing Code specifications.

A publicly accessible database would be used to keep a record of leased properties, landlords for those properties and past Housing Code violations there.

Lee Conner, a graduate student at UNC and member of the task force, said the important thing about the proposed system is it equally promotes landlord and tenant accountability.

"The database would be on the Web, and renters would be able to get necessary information about rental properties or file a complaint about a landlord," he said.

"Landlords would be better informed about what was going on with their property, and neighbors could find out more easily who was the landlord of a property," Conner said.

Conner said the system is meant to facilitate communication among the town, landlords, renters and permanent residents, with accountability and responsibility as the ultimate goals.

"If landlords aren't keeping up their end of the deal, then it can be reported, and if tenants are being bad neighbors and citizens, then the same thing," Conner said. "Either way, people are encouraged to live up to their responsibilities."

The issue of limiting the number of unrelated tenants was a particular concern for residents of the Northside neighborhood who say they worry the entire neighborhood will turn into off-campus housing.

"People seem to really be buying up all around here," Northside resident Velma Perry said. "They turn everything into a rental."

Town Council member Bill Strom told task force members he was very happy with the proposal the group came up with and hopes the council would find a way to pass it.

But task force members were careful not to call the program a final answer to town housing woes.

"This was a success but just a great beginning, not an end," Northside resident and task force member Estelle Mabry said. "We will have a lot more evidence in three years showing whether this program works."

The City Editor can be reached at citydesk@unc.edu.