Landlords in Syracuse have had mixed reactions to a recent rental registry amendment passed by the city’s Common Council that will require certain landlords to allow interior code enforcement inspections of properties.

The amendment, which will go into effect on July 1, won’t help with housing problems in the area, some landlords said.

“The rental registry that they passed is totally missing the point,” said Donna Glassberg, who runs OrangeHousing.com, a property rental website.

Under the amendment, landlords of homes with one or two families must submit to exterior and interior inspections by the code department every three years to be compliant with the rental registry, a list of one- and two-family homes. Previously, the rental registry only required exterior inspections every two years.

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Ben Tupper, a Syracuse University-area landlord, said he believes the rental registry amendment will focus on decrepit houses on the South Side, Northside, Eastside and Westside. Tupper said he thinks that, even though the university area is not the focus of the amendment, some landlords are being negligent.

“There are landlords in the university area that need to do a better job,” he said. “They will be targeted by this.”

The text of the amendment does not note any particular focus areas in the city. Councilor-at-large Khalid Bey proposed the amendment at a Jan. 31 meeting of the council. At that meeting, Bey said the change would help the city crack down on landlords who are “serially negligent.”

Glassberg, though, said she believes the new amendment is not addressing real housing problems. She said the city needs to create new programs or initiatives that will help landlords fix the properties they rent.

“Some of the landlords do want to fix their houses, but (there’s) not enough skilled people in the area that know how to work on a house,” Glassberg said.

Glassberg said adding the interior inspections will be a waste of money and time.

Tupper said he believes the amendment will make it harder for code enforcement officers to do their job. Ken Towsley, director of the city’s code enforcement department, has said that only one-third of one- and two-family homes are on the registry, which has no enforcement mechanism.

“You have limited amount of code enforcement officers, and the proposal radically expanded the number of houses,” Tupper said.

The system is already dysfunctional, he added, and he thinks it will become worse because code enforcement won’t be able to keep up with the work.

Anna Martin, property manager of Syracuse Green Housing, said she has not heard much about the changes to the rental registry. Martin said the only issue she has to deal with in regard to the registry is the cost of registering properties.

Tupper said he paid more than $10,000 to register his properties with the city. And the new amendment will require him to pay more, he said.

Andre El-Amir, owner of Andre’s Syracuse University Area Apartments and Houses, said the amendment does not really affect his business. El-Amir said his properties already comply with the registry. Tupper also said he has no fear about the amendment because he already fills out the correct paperwork.

He said the new amendment was created with good intentions, but he believes that the registry will cause more problems than solutions.

“I hope that as time goes on they will tweak it,” Tupper said. “That they see some of the mistakes and change the mistakes and try to make it better. That would be my hope.”

Published on April 8, 2018 at 7:11 pm

Contact Bianca: bmoorman@syr.edu