38% of Lansing rentals may be unsafe. Is the city doing enough to fix the problem?

LANSING — Meredith Johnson stepped carefully over a broken ramp before knocking on the door of a one-story home at the 2000 block of Pleasant View.

No answer.

The can of Hot Shot insecticide in a basket on the trash-strewn front porch was another red flag — "bed bugs," Johnson said.

Water has been shut off at the property since March, but some neighbors told the city they thought people were living at the dilapidated home. 

Johnson, a city code inspector, hopes that's not the case. 

"Certainly, nobody should have to live like this," Johnson said, before red-tagging to the home on May 24 to indicate it's unsafe for habitation. She frowned at the dirty diapers littering the driveway and the broken toys visible through a basement window and added, "I really hope kids aren't living here."

More:Are you living in an illegal rental? Here's how to find out and get help

Johnson suspects the home could be an illegal rental, although it's not clear if the property is abandoned or if it's occupied by an owner who won't return calls.

Lansing leaders say they are deploying more code officers like Johnson to crack down on landlords who skirt the city's rental rules. 

City officials admit, however, that more than one-third of known rentals remain noncompliant. That means thousands of tenants could be living in substandard or even hazardous conditions. The problem also affects homeowners, since shoddy rentals have the potential to bring down a neighborhood's property values.

How Lansing tracks rental housing

A Lansing ordinance requires landlords to register rental properties with the city, and the owner of the Pleasant View home hasn't done so. Attempts by the Lansing State Journal to contact the owner listed in property records were unsuccessful.

The registration system allows the city to track rentals with the goal of ensuring that thousands of properties, home to tens of thousands of people, are up to code.

More than 56,000 Lansing residents live in rentals, according to 2017 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Roughly half of all Lansing households are renting and that percentage has grown over time. 

This year, Lansing is on track to perform more rental inspections than it has in the recent past, although 38% rental buildings in the city's database still lack a valid certificate showing they passed an inspection, according to figures provided by Lansing's Office of Economic Development and Planning on May 30.

To be fully licensed, each rental property must pass a city inspection every two or three years, depending on the number of units at the property and whether Lansing found violations during a previous inspection.

Among a host of other requirements, inspectors check for smoke detectors and make sure rentals are free of health hazards like mold or rodents. They make sure a porch isn't ready to collapse and that doors and windows are in working order.

Why 38% of known rentals are unlicensed

In some cases, rentals remain unlicensed because of unpaid property taxes or because a landlord fails to schedule an inspection. In other cases, the landlord has reached out to the city, but code officers haven't found time to complete an inspection after the property's certificate expires.

Some landlords wait months for an inspection after contacting the city to set one up. The average wait time for an inspection is two to three months, Brian McGrain, Lansing's director of economic development and planning, told the City Council in April.

Some rentals lack a license because inspectors found safety problems and the landlord failed to prove those issues have subsequently been fixed.

Lansing's registry includes more than 29,000 units within 9,924 rental buildings. More than one-third, or 3,778, of those rental buildings, have a missing or expired license.

The total number of illegally operating rentals is likely higher than those numbers reflect, given that the registry only includes rentals that the city knows about.

Lansing officials say they don't know how many landlords are operating under the table while neglecting to register their rentals with the city. 

"We'd like to bring everyone into compliance," Lansing Mayor Andy Schor said last month when asked what an acceptable compliance rate would be. "We do what we can with the resources we have."

City says rental inspections are up 

For years, Lansing officials blamed limited staffing for the city's backlog of rental inspections. 

In an attempt to address the problem, the City Council and the mayor agreed during recent budget rounds to set aside more money for code enforcement. Lansing now has nine full-time code officers and plans to add a 10th during the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The city will put about $1 million total toward performing rental inspections during the coming fiscal year, according to Lansing's 2020 budget. The total budget for Economic Development and Planning, the department that includes code compliance, will be $5.7 million, a 14.5% increase over the current fiscal year.

In 2017, under the administration of then-Mayor Virg Bernero, Lansing performed 4,598 rental inspections, McGrain said.

That number increased slightly to 4,803 inspections in 2018, Mayor Andy Schor's first year in office.

City officials estimate they've done about 4,500 rental inspections as of this May, a marked increase given that the year is not yet half over. Schor attributes the uptick to the added staff in the code department.

It costs $400 to register a rental, and there's a $150 penalty on top of that if the city discovers the landlord initially failed to register. 

The city also charges for inspections. The inspection fee for a single-family home, for instance, is $215. For an inspection at a multi-family structure, the city charges a base $150 fee plus $18 for every unit in the building. Late inspection fees range from $75 to $150. 

A year ago this month, the mayor promised to step up rental enforcement after two people died in a June 7 fire at a townhouse that had failed its last city rental inspection. The Lansing Housing Commission, a local agency under oversight from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, owns and manages the townhome.

The mayor subsequently maintained that city inspections could not have prevented the fire, which may have been electrical in nature. Nonetheless, the tragedy put a spotlight on the fact the LHC had failed to fix problems flagged by city inspectors prior to 2018.

Why rental inspections matter

If Lansing wants to ensure the safety of its rental housing, a "heavily-regulated" system is necessary, said Brian Gilmore, who leads the Housing Clinic at the Michigan State University College of Law.

"If you're going to attract people to the city you need safe, sanitary and affordable housing," Gilmore said. "The only way you're going to have that is if you push for it."

When tenants sign a lease, they agree to provisions like paying rent on time. Landlords implicitly agree to maintain the property according to housing code and that includes having a valid rental license, Gilmore said. An imbalance arises because renters often aren't aware of their rights and may not be able to afford legal representation, said Gilmore, an attorney who primarily represents low-income tenants.

"Most landlords are interested in running a business in a responsible way," Gilmore said. "It's the slumlords you have to worry about, the ones who aren't even interested in trying to register."

Tenants end up living in substandard housing when they feel they have few other choices, Gilmore said. If the tenant decides to leave due to the landlord's failure to make necessary repairs or provide utilities — a phenomenon called "constructive eviction" — the landlord knows he or she can start the cycle over by renting to someone else.

"There really are two housing markets," Gilmore said. "There's a good housing market and then there's the other one if you're poor."

Nancy Mahlow, president of Lansing's Eastside Neighborhood Organization, has code officers on speed dial. The inspectors are hard-working and responsive, she said. 

The problem, according to Mahlow, is that the city still hasn't funded enough code positions.

"There are so many unregistered rentals and just to keep up with the registered rentals is an astronomical task," Mahlow said. "People should be able to live in a home and rent and be proud of where they're living. These landlords are making money off people's lives."

More: City issues warnings on south Lansing townhome complex

More: Why Lansing residents aren't giving up on this housing complex

At-large City Council Member Patricia Spitzley, who's served nearly four years, said she believes the city has made strides to improve rental compliance.

"I really do think this administration has made it a priority," Spitzley said. "It has to be. This is where people are living."

Lansing says it doesn't track rental compliance over time

Lansing administrators insist rental enforcement is a priority, although officials have not provided numbers to prove that rental compliance has gotten better or worse over time.

The city's computerized code compliance database can generate current figures on licensed and registered rentals, but the system can't pull historic numbers, McGrain said. 

"This is kind of rolling process," McGrain said. "Our software is designed to give us our current inventory and tell us what's in compliance and what's not."

Lansing officials are "open to potentially revising and improving," practices for tracking historic rental data, McGrain said. For instance, officials could pull rental registration data on Jan. 1 of each year and provide a report to the City Council or the mayor as a matter of routine.

Policies among Michigan cities: How often are inspections required?

Here's what Michigan cities have on the books regarding the minimum frequency of rental inspections. This information doesn't reflect whether the policies are actually being enforced.

Lansing: Inspect every two or three years

East Lansing: Inspect every 13 months

Ann Arbor: Inspect every 2.5 years (did not pass previous inspection on first try) or 3.5 years (passed previous inspection on first try)

Flint: Inspect every three years

Ypsilanti: Inspect every two years

Detroit: Inspect every year (unpaid property taxes or previous violations), two years (single or two-family homes without prior violations) or three years (other multi-family homes with no prior violations)

Re-inspections are not routine, despite an ordinance that requires them

Lansing derives its rental inspection criteria from the International Property Maintenance Code, minimum standards that serve as the model for housing regulations across the globe.

"Lansing, on paper, has a good housing code," Gilmore said. "The problem is they don’t have the resources to inspect all these properties."

If an initial inspection turns up a violation, a Lansing ordinance states "The Office of Code Compliance shall reinspect after a reasonable time for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the violation has been corrected."

In practice, that doesn't always happen.

Lansing officials are likely to reinspect when inspectors turn up "severe" violations at multi-family properties, McGrain said, although he said the city could not provide data on the number of re-inspections it performs.

The city is less likely to re-inspect single-family homes where violations are relatively minor, according to McGrain.

In the wake of the fatal LaRoy Froh fire, Schor promised that code inspectors will re-inspect all public housing properties to make sure the LHC fixed problems that were flagged during the city's most recent round of inspections. That re-inspection process could be completed by the end of this year, officials anticipate.

Code officers will continue to sweep through all Lansing public housing properties every two to three years for initial inspections, Schor has promised, although he stopped short of promising that re-inspections will continue to occur at the LHC after 2019.

If a re-inspection does not happen, Lansing allows landlords to comply by turning in a signed affidavit, certifying that they will make the repairs.

"In a perfect world, if we had unlimited resources, theoretically we would go back to every home," McGrain said. "Years ago, as we were losing access to resources, we had to design a system that to some degree was based on trust."

That form is sufficient for Lansing to comply with its own re-inspection ordinance, Schor said.

Gilmore, an associate professor of law at MSU, disagrees.

"If you're not going to do re-inspections, why have a housing code?" Gilmore said. "Where is the hammer?"

More on Lansing housing:

Most Lansing public housing complexes are not certified by the city as safe to rent

Housing Commission promises more oversight, maintenance as new inspection reports released

Contact Sarah Lehr at (517) 377-1056 or slehr@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahGLehr. 

Support local journalism by subscribing to the Lansing State Journal.