Last month, the Community Improvement Committee on BG City Council approved a self-certification rental registration checklist. With guidance from the East Side Neighborhood Association, City Council prompted the checklist to help landlords ensure residential rental housing meets specific health and safety standards. I think we can all agree this is a good idea.
The checklist is not too demanding. It calls for simple safety measures like maintaining electric panels, access to adequate bathrooms, and ensuring one or more operable windows are present. For 2 years I lived in an apartment without any windows. I wanted to move, but it was all I could afford.
I recently went to my landlord to see if he had heard of this newly approved checklist. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I thought, maybe he was planning on updating the apartment. Maybe he was unaware that a sleeping room “must have a door and an operable window.” Unfortunately I was sadly mistaken.
Upon raising the issue of the checklist my landlord told me that “the Eastside group is full of ****, and “if they don’t like the way the city is being run, they can move.” He subsequently told me that if I tried to push for rental reform they would “sue us in federal court.”
As it stands now, landlords are able to self-certify their own properties. This gross lack of oversight has allowed my landlord and countless others to put the health and safety of our citizens at risk for far too long. We need real rental reform in our community, not just watered-down laws that maintain the status-quo.
Nick Rubando
Bowling Green
(Nick Rubando is running for Bowling Green City Council in Ward 1. To learn more about his campaign visit nickrubando.com)
