Rental Registry Rundown

How the City's Rental Registry came to be

When the Rental Registry was launched by the City at the Landlord Summit on March 9 and letters went out to property owners advising them that rental units in the City must now be registered, it drew understandable attention. The Rental Registry is a new program and marks a change from what people are used to. As with any change, it will take time to adapt.

The registry requires any property owners who are renting out their property to register with the municipality. Property owners can register online or in person at the Department of Inspectional Services at 25 Meade St.

The registry asks for valuable information for first responders and other City departments, including updated contact information, the number of units, the number of bedrooms in each unit, etc.

The program has elicited a lot of feedback from the community, and we value that. When implementing a new program, it’s important to find and work out potential kinks to make sure the program is running as smoothly as possible. This is especially important for the Rental Registry since it will be a critical public safety tool to keep residents safe and property owners informed. Often, when taking a program from an idea to reality, you find out you must make changes for it to work in the real world.

Considering that feedback, I am recommending amendments to the Rental Registry and Inspection Ordinances. The amendments work to make the ordinances more understandable and to address issues the public raised with the fine structure for property owners who do not register for the program. The way the ordinance was originally written imposed a $300 per day fine for failing to register. The amended ordinance would impose a fine equal to double the applicable registration or renewal fee for each month of noncompliance.

It costs $15 per unit to register a residential, commercial, retail, or office unit and $25 to register a lot. There is also an annual renewal fee of $5 for the former and $15 for the latter. This means that if someone fails to register their triple decker (which would cost $45) they will be fined $90 per month until they do.

The registration fees, which remain unchanged, will go toward the administration of the program, paying for inspectors, software, etc., and will not fully cover the cost of the program.

I am also proposing an amendment to the fines for not complying with the Inspection Section of the ordinance. The amended ordinance would change the fine from $300 per day to $200 per month for noncompliance.

The proposed amendments will go before City Council at its Tuesday, April 9 meeting, and councilors will have to vote to enact any potential changes.

It is important to emphasize that any fines will only be applied when a property owner has not registered a rental unit or has not complied with the City’s inspection.

The goal of the Rental Registry, which also involves an inspection of rental units every five years, is to ensure rental units in the city are safe and livable and to provide first responders with critical information in emergencies.

After the Council voted to adopt the ordinance, it took time to get everything in place to launch the program. My administration and the Department of Inspectional Services worked to build the capacity and infrastructure necessary to facilitate the program before launching it in March.

Initially, the deadline to register was April 30, but acknowledging the feedback we’ve received, we’ve pushed the deadline to register to July 1, 2024.

After that, property owners must renew their registration annually by the anniversary of their initial registration, and new property owners will have 30 days from the date they purchase their property to register.

The idea of a rental registry in the city first made it to the City Council floor in 2019. District 5 Councilor Matthew Wally requested the Commissioner of Inspectional Services develop a registry for non-owner-occupied residential properties, and the Council at the time voted to adopt his request.

Related orders were made in the following years, but the idea of a rental registry gained renewed attention, and added support, when the Department of Inspectional Services and Worcester Fire Department requested a Rental Registry Program and Inspection Initiative Program for all rented properties on May 24, 2022.

The departments’ request came just 10 days after four people died in a fire at 2 Gage Street, a property that had a history of code violations.

In a letter to City Councilors, then-City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. wrote that the registry would provide valuable data to the Fire Department, including how many units are in the building, how many are residential, and how many bedrooms are in each unit. Augustus explained that existing inspections are only done in common areas of buildings, for example, making it difficult to know if a three bedroom unit is being rented all individually, with separate locks on each bedroom, or if a living room was walled off to create a fourth bedroom, potentially cutting off the secondary means of egress for other occupants, etc. – this is critical and potentially life-saving information to have in the case of an emergency.

“The City of Worcester is all too familiar with the devastating toll of fires. This week alone over 50 residents were displaced by just a few fire incidents and four residents lost their lives,” Fire Chief Martin Dyer wrote in a letter of support accompanying the request. “The Rental Registry program will not eliminate the hazard, but I am confident that it will have a significant impact on the safety and well-being of Worcester residents.”

The rental registry item was held by Mayor Joseph Petty at the May 24 meeting and then referred by the Council to its Committee on Economic Development at a meeting on June 7, 2022. After discussing the item, the committee voted to recommend the passage of an ordinance that would establish the registry in a 2 to 1 vote. Councilors Sarai Rivera and Sean Rose voted for it and Councilor Khrystian King voted against it. The committee sent its recommendation to an Aug. 9, 2022, Council meeting, and in a 10-to-0 vote, the council voted to advertise the ordinance, kicking off a process to enact it. Councilor At-Large Khrystian King was absent from that meeting. The municipality is required to advertise new ordinances and amendments for two weeks.

Then, an item to ordain the ordinance was placed on the Sep. 20 agenda. The meeting was recessed, and the ordinance was ultimately ordained, a natural next step when the Council has already voted to advertise, at a special meeting on Thursday Sept. 29, 2022.

Then for over a year, the Department of Inspectional Services and my administration worked to prepare the program for launch. During that time, either I or Commissioner Chris Spencer provided updates on the rental registry at City Council meetings on Jan. 24 and Oct. 3, 2023.

During the Oct. 3 meeting, we provided an informational communication that explained the infrastructure and capacity building that was done to prepare for the launch, including reviewing similar types of programs in other communities; analyzing software; considering workflow, staffing, and physical infrastructure; and procuring equipment.

The program was then launched during the Landlord Summit at the DCU Center on Saturday, March 9.

Every tenant in the city deserves rental units that are safe and livable. This program is meant to ensure that, just as car inspections are meant to ensure cars are safe for the roads and health inspections are meant to ensure food is safe to eat.

As this program moves forward my administration will continue to work with City departments to make sure that it is best serving residents.