City officials grappled this week with whether they are doing enough to help apartment dwellers who fall into the clutches of bad landlords.
Councilmember Bill Peloza, chair of the Municipal Service Committee, brought the subject up at Monday’s meeting in light of the recent experience with the Auburn Pines apartments north of City Hall. The City moved all the tenants out last summer after inspectors found substandard conditions there, including water in the light fixtures and electrical sockets, brittle walls and ceilings, and mold.
To date, the owners of Auburn Pines, HMS Land, LLC of Seattle and Everett. have done nothing to date to address the deficiencies.
“Nope, they have not taken any action,” Kevin Schneider, planning director for the City of Auburn, confirmed Wednesday. “It’s ‘as is,’ if you will.”
Peloza said that the City could be more proactive by identifying apartments that people have to live in that are not all they should be.
“Is there anything the City can do to improve that for those folks, in as much as many landlords are from out of state and are not really concerned about the quality of life for their tenants?” Peloza said.
He suggested that the City could get ahead of the game by organizing an ad-hoc committee to rate certain complexes.
Councilman John Partridge said the problem becomes defining what the minimum, non-negotiable, living standards should be, and who should define them.
The only standards the City has been able to address to date are public safety and health standards, which are already in the City code. Auburn has a Landlord Ordinance, and Mayor Pete Lewis meets with landlords and apartment managers quarterly.
“As somebody who lived in pretty much minimal housing to start out my life, you have to have – especially for young individuals on the bottom of the scale –
housing that is affordable to them,” Lewis said. “That could means it’s a studio apartment half the size of this room, as I remember quite clearly. But the public safety and health standards are the only thing we have been able to address.”
Added Peloza, “It really bothers me inside when … the owners are living high on the hog and these little kids are being taken advantage of.”
Committee members agreed to review the Landlord ordinance, the City code, the state’s Landlord and Tenant Act and hear from planners and police at the Oct. 11 meeting, which starts at 4 p.m.
