Providence Committee on Ordinances-Monday, September 30, 2024-5:30 PM

Great.

Councilwoman Mary Kay Harris is absent. Councilman Oscar Garland? Present. Consignor Justin Boyers is absent. We have three present, two absent.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. We'd also like to welcome. We'd be to ops and to be here. Welcome, Brandon. Okay.

So first item on the agenda, please.

Item number one, an ordinance amending chapter 13 housing of the Providence Code of Ordinances to act article nine, multiunit ordinance.

Thank you so much. And I have two of them. I have an exhibit that I'd like to extend mostly to enter into the record I also have a substitution. So all I'm gonna do is enter into the records at.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak at it. This particular change or I'm in this particular chapter in the housing ordinance or in the housing section ordinances is directly related to, quote, unquote, property managers. And, essentially, what it is the purpose of this ordinance is to provide the city with basic contact information. This by basic, I mean, name, address, phone number, email of a designated person that owns six or more units in in our city. The reason why this I felt that this was important was to that in order for us to be able to continue doing the work that we do in our communities, one of the things that I think is really helpful is to be able to have some good contact information in situations where perhaps DIS the process of DIS would require a little bit more too much time.

So let me give a perfect example of what this means. When we discuss things like rats getting too very long or extreme down the most specific places, the process would be identical to 30 to not only get a notice out to the to the owner and or letting that some you know, they're to be they're going to be fine that are approved as a result of the DIS process. So what I thought would be something that would be easy for us at the city to be able to do is to have just basic contact information available so that he or DIS can have a a person contact with a simple phone call to say, hey, John Smith. We have a little bit of a situation here. We've gotten reports already of a long you know, your grass being extremely long.

Can you please, you know, let us know when you're gonna be taken care of? And four, us as counselors, to be able to do this. Think it's a good stewards of our community that allows us this opportunity. One of the things that I wanted to make sure that we did was in talking about this here was I wanted to dispel a couple of things and a couple of concerns that people had had over time.

And a couple of

we made a couple of changes to it, but there are actual amendments within this ordinance that I wanted to make sure that we to discuss while we were here. The first one so I guess that what I'll do now is go through the things that people told me for perceived as being one of the potential issue then. One of the things that people or the feedback that we have received that is with that this would we have to hire a property property management company for this particular ordinance. It's actually not the case at all. All we're asking for is the designee of a property.

In this particular case, if you own six properties, if there's a person that you are designating as the primary contact for this particular property, that's the information that we're asking.

Six properties or six units? Six units. Excuse me. Okay.

The other piece to this is, you know, one of the things that people were saying was that the city I'm sorry. The state is actually enacting a registry that is being implemented starting tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken.

Right.

And I wanted to make sure that people were aware. This is the lead registry that is going to be public facing through the state. That particular registry is something that the state is taking care of. We while it will be public facing for people to be able to research, this property manager information will only be housed with DIS. So DIS, the Department of Inspections and Services, will be the only people that have this information.

This will not be a public facing entity so people don't have to worry about their information being put out there for the public.

So it's not a problem. It's not a go online and look it up.

Not a problem. I mean,

they will be able to do that with the state registry.

Local contact information. So it has to be a person from within the state.

So you're make an immediate contact?

Correct. And phone number, email address, and name name. The other the other piece to this, which is something that we heard a lot of here, people were saying that the plus would actually be something that would be passed on to tens, and that's not the case. Actually, there is no plus attached to this except for in the moment of a person potentially not providing information. Right.

And what we've done in this particular change in this in this ordinance is we've actually changed it from will be imposed to may be imposed. So the BIS director has direct discussion on whether or not to impose a fine as a result of not not providing the information that this request is asking for.

So for whatever reason, somebody falls short to comply with this if it was enacted or not, It's not a problematic filing of our day.

No. Not not at all. Yeah. Guys have discretion on that.

The other thing that we made a change on in this ordinance, and this is through the recommendations of the Department of Inspections and services so that we can adequately support the the products that are being done here. Originally, we had wanted for this to start immediately after passing, and what we've done is actually we send it out to February 1 so that people have until February 1 while we acclimate to the, you know, the work that needs to be done in house for us to be able to support this. We are giving Liberty a good

February 1. So five months. Right.

Because I have. So Ten Ten to me. The question would be, like, if the person owns a building, when you say six units, you're talking about six units residential or six or mix use three or four or five, like, two commercial and and and five residential. You specify totally, it doesn't matter. It's

six units. So we what we did in the in the ordinance was describe what the multi unit dwelling would be, and it would be six or more self contained suites or apartments or multiple buildings on a jaded lot held by the same owner. Commercial entities are not included in this. Just residential. Just residential.

Yeah.

So someone owns a six unit, which is composed of two commercials and four residential. Do they still have to register? No. Because it has to be six residential pinnacle. Right.

Okay.

It's strictly for residential. One of the things that as we start navigating a different what what our housing landscape looks like in the city is we have developers that have larger buildings or multiple buildings. And one of the things that I think is extremely important is for us to be able to have a collaboration and a partnership with these property owners so that when there are issues, if there are issues, we have a direct contact to be able to support some of the ongoing concerns should there this is more ineffective or good neighbor policy rather than a heavy ordinance with larger position of fines when somebody doesn't do anything. This is just us being able to understand what our landscape is amongst property owners within all of our awards and really be able to create an opportunity for collaboration rather than immediate implementation of consequence or punishment should something happen.

Anything else, Yes. What

about the the fine? Where where you can do this fine finalize is for the people to get pushed to comply, or what about if they don't they don't comply and they will take more than than than one ounce? So what we did was we changed it so that it was it the

DIS director has the opportunity to impose a fine should they believe it's necessary. If it's something where, you know, somebody is just genuinely not be being noncomplacent or not compliant rather, I think that perhaps the DIS director having that opportunity to use his discretion to place a fine is something very different than immediately after February 1, not complying means an immediate fine. I think giving people a little bit of leeway to be able to just give us some basic contact information is a fair a fair opportunity to get people to support what we're trying to do here. And I Yes.

Thank you, sir. Last question. Yeah. Let's say that a question on three three properties. Mhmm.

Each property has three units. Another property has two units. Another property has one, that's a six unit. Mhmm. Does that person have to register?

That's six if within as long

as they're within adjacent lots, yes, they would have to register it. Yeah.

And each in lots means in

the same lot? Consistently next to

each other. I'm talking about I'm talking about, like, three properties in the city. One in the lake, one in only one in Scattered Scattered sites. No.

No. They're scattered to the adjacent.

Adjacent. So they have to be to their, like, room. Correct.

From my understanding, it has to be one unit that is six residential or more, or they're adjacent or together. It could be two two two to make sense.

Right. But it has

to be the consent. Two of the unit. Yeah.