What's wrong with Charlotte's Rental Property Ordinance?

Charlotte City Council passed an ordinance in 2009 requiring owners of certain rental properties to register their properties with the City and pay a hefty registration fee ($335 for a single-family home as of this writing). In theory, this ordinance was supposed to help the police by requiring owners of historically problematic properties to work with the police to help clean up the property. In practice, however, there are several major problems with the ordinance. Here are three:

The owner isn't notified until 12 - 24 months AFTER there has been a problem at the owner's home.
The measurement period was initially supposed to be on a calendar month basis and the owners were supposed to be notified by June of the following year if they exceeded the disorder activity threshold. Somewhere along the line, however, apparently a verbal agreement was reached allowing the measurement period to be from May to June and owners are not notified until the following May. We were just notified in May, 2012 that one of our properties made the list because of one call in November, 2010. The tenant who lived in the home at the time of the "violation" has already moved out of the home!

The owner isn't given the opportunity to correct or address the problem.
The first notification the owner receives is when the letters are sent requiring the owner to attend the hearing regarding their violation status. The owner isn't told in a timely fashion that a violent crime occurred on their property. In contrast, if the grass is more than 12" tall, the City drives by the house, takes a picture and mails a letter to the owner giving them 10 days to correct the problem. Yet they can't send a letter to the owner when someone has committed a crime at their home? Really?

Even if the owner does exactly what the council, police, neighbors, etc desire, the owner is still penalized.
The process doesn't take into account whether or not the owner (or their property manager) has done exactly the right thing. For example, we took over management of a problem property and worked with the police to evict the tenants. A year later we received the letter about the violations that had occurred prior to our management and we were told the owner had to pay the fine and register the home. Imagine the owner's reaction when we told him that not only did he lose rent and pay to have the home re-rented, he still had to pay a fee to the City!

These three examples don't even address the issue that the property owner is being penalized for the behavior of the tenants or tenant's guests.

A good property manager will be able to minimize the risks of exceeding the Disorder Activity Threshold (through screening, monitoring, etc), but will never be able to guarantee that a tenant or their guests won't commit some act that pushes the home above the threshold. Although the registration fee is $335, the annual costs of implementing the entire remediation plan can easily exceed $1,000.

Charlotte City Council is voting on an amendment to this ordinance on Tuesday, May 29 that would require EVERY rental property to be registered with the city. Please email Charlotte's City Council if you are concerned about this ordinance.

Charlotte City Council:
Mayor Anthony Fox
Mayor Pro-Tem Patrick Cannon
Councilman John Autry
Councilman Michael Barnes
Councilman Warren Cooksey
Councilman Andy Dulin
Councilwoman Claire Fallon
Councilman David Howard
Councilwoman Patsy Kinsey
Councilwoman LaWana Mayfield
Councilman James Mitchell
Councilwoman Beth Pickering