Buffalo News Editorial Board | August 19, 2024

Buffalo’s rental registry needs improvement – as soon as possible.

The registry’s purpose is to enhance housing quality through tracking and revenue generation. Instead, it is struggling due to persistent issues with delinquent fees and outdated data.

Landlords are getting away without declaring their ownership and tenants are the ones penalized with unscrutinized property. Just down the Thruway, Rochester is slightly ahead on compliance for non-owner-occupied landlords.

In Buffalo, nearly 44% of properties on the rental registry have owners who are behind on registration fees – $50 for single-family dwellings and $100 for two-family dwellings. Yet, the system continues to list these properties as active. The lack of an effective program is clearly undermining the city’s ability to conduct timely inspections, not to mention missing out on revenue-raising fees.

Twenty percent of those delinquent, noncompliant landlords are already in Housing Court. With more proactive rental inspections Cathy Amdur, the commissioner of Permit & Inspection Services, expects the numbers to increase.

The department is working to conduct inspections, make data more accurate, make people more accountable and implement real change. City officials say they are on a continual pathway to consistent, measurable improvement. There is a director and two clerks; the second clerk works on data collection and accuracy.

That is good news.

Still, a recent News story by Justin O’Connor highlights a broader failure in the enforcement of housing regulations.

Those regulations include what groups like the Partnership for the Public Good (PPG) complain about when it comes to upholding “health and safety, including chipping lead paint, sewer seepage into basements, rotting porches, broken smoke and carbon dioxide detectors, smoking electrical boxes and interior doors being installed as exterior doors,” as PPG executive director Andrea Ó Súilleabháin said.

In 2009, PPG published a report about the rental registry. The report noted issues with delinquency and enforcement. The partnership also took note of the high delinquency rates while compiling a report in December for the Common Council pushing for the registry fee increase and calling for better information-gathering.

Last month, the partnership along with three local housing activist groups and four tenants filed a lawsuit against the city accusing it of failing to enforce its proactive rental inspection law.

Since 2020, the department has inspected fewer than 5,000 of the 36,000 units that needed to be inspected and has issued 458 certificates of rental compliance. Last year, the department inspected 293 properties, down from 2,252 the year before.

Amdur said the department uses summonses and sometimes Housing Court to try to enforce the law, pointing out increasing inspection staff numbers as a potential route to future improvements.

In May, the city doubled the rental registry fees to fund seven new inspector positions. This happened after Amdur raised concerns that the city’s proactive rental inspection law was unfunded. Amdur said those roles, which will bring total inspectors to 10 if they are filled, have been budgeted for hiring, and that this additional staffing will help with compliance.

The addition of new inspectors should be helpful. Still, activists remain unconvinced. They contend the registry’s problems are, in part, “another casualty of the city’s non-enforcement of its proactive rental inspection law,” as reported.

Bottom line, the city should undertake a comprehensive review, and possible overhaul, of the registry’s management and take another look at enforcement. A priority must be placed on data maintenance, effective fee collection and ensure housing standards are upheld, and residents are protected.

Otherwise, city officials will have to explain to the public why the rental registry is missing so many landlord’s names, not to mention revenue.