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The city officially announced its landlord registration plan earlier this week, which will make use of the city’s water bills.
City officials expressed a need in early 2012 to register landlords, mainly because of a number of out-of-town landlords who were only identified by a P.O. Box address. The city presented a plan to possibly collect a fee and mandate landlords register with the city — an idea that did not sit well with many rental property owners.
The idea was formally presented at the first City Council of the month in May 2012, and at the following meeting in May 2012 scores of red-clad landlords came to voice their dismay.
Community Revitalization Director Doug Adkins said the need for the registration was to hold landlords accountable for poorly maintained properties. The landlords did not disagree with the idea to register and hold those landlords — which many of whom live out of town and only provide a P.O. Box — but charging a fee was too much.
The city and the landlords formed a committee and a few months later the findings were presented to council. One conclusion was that the city needed to be able to find and cite non-compliant landlords into court where they were not willing to comply voluntarily with code violations.
“But it needs to be done in a way that does not impact the residents, owners and tenants who routinely everyday do the right thing and maintain their property.”
The new registration process, which starts July 1, was unveiled at City Council earlier this week and landlords that attended wore green, saying it was their visible sign of approval.
The Journal first reported in March the city would unveil the plan to require property owners to provide contact information or a physical mailing address before water service can be obtained, even if the tenant of the property makes the request. Adkins said this will not immediately affect current water customers.
“Using the water billing system in this manner eliminates the need to enact any type of rental registration ordinance,” Adkins said. “And this idea came from the landlords, not from the city.”
Landlord and local businessman Steve Bohannon said the landlords “felt it was necessary that the landlords be registered but were not in favor of any kind of fee to be able to do that.”
The collaboration between the landlords and the city also established a dialogue between the two.
“We felt that we’ve got a conduit now to work with the city, as investors, to be able to promote the city and to build the city and have a harmonious relationship so we can move forward and get a lot more things achieved,” Bohannon said.
The registration process gave the landlords a reason to meet regularly and led to them forming the Middletown chapter of the Investment Property Owners Association. It’s the first chapter of the IPOA of Butler County. Middletown meets at 6 p.m. every third Thursday at Java Johnny’s, 3534 Central Ave.
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