A statewide system to enforce safety standards in all rental properties in Vermont, both short- and long-term, has been approved by the state Senate.
S.79 proposes establishing a five-person task force that would maintain a statewide registry of rental properties, and inspect them when tenants or property owners filed complaints about properties’ failure to meet the state’s rental housing health codes.
The bill would also offer competitive-rate, forgivable loans to landlords who commit to using the money to refurbish rental properties.
The Senate voted 22-7 Friday to grant initial approval of the legislation.
Ahead of the vote, Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, thanked Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, for shepherding the complex bill under a tight legislative deadline.
“She did an incredible job getting it in under the wire in really respectable shape,” Sirotkin said on the virtual Senate floor Friday. Both senators are sponsors of S.79.
Housing advocates have long pushed for a stronger system for enforcing safety standards in Vermont rental properties.
The state already has rental safety codes, and larger municipalities such as Burlington have inspectors who regularly check rental properties to make sure they meet those standards. But a majority of the state’s towns rely instead on town health officers — who are registered with the Department of Health and assume many other public health duties — to check on whether rental properties meet safety standards.
However, town health officers are often part-time workers of even volunteers, without training as housing inspectors.
Lack of a strong enforcement system has contributed to widespread problems in rental properties in recent years, housing advocates say. A study last year found that about 7,000 rental households were plagued by faulty or nonexistent facilities, including kitchens and heating systems.
S.79 would relieve town health officers of rental inspection responsibilities — without eliminating their positions. It would establish an inspection task force and property registry within the state Division of Fire Safety. The division would hire five employees to handle the inspection service, and landlords would be required to pay $35 to join the registry.
Addressing a question that emerged on the floor Thursday, when the Senate passed over a vote on S.79, Clarkson clarified Friday that the inspection and registration processes would include subsidized housing, too.
“All rental housing must be inspected if a tenant or landlord makes a complaint, even if it’s subsidized housing,” Clarkson said on the virtual Senate floor.
At an earlier hearing, the state’s Rental Housing Advisory Board determined that the $35 user fee was the fairest way to fund the inspection program, Clarkson said. She acknowledged that some landlords would not be able to afford that cost — a determination that will be made on a case-by-case basis.
“There would be no easy way to determine who should not pay the $35 fee,” Clarkson said, but “for most property owners, this should be manageable.”
Correction: This report was updated Monday, March 29, at 12:11 p.m. to clarify that a five-person task force that would maintain a statewide registry of rental properties, and inspect them when tenants or property owners filed complaints about properties’ failure to meet the state’s rental housing health codes.