Despite protests, rental inspections unanimously favored

Creston City Council was met with multiple comments Tuesday from citizens, both positive and negative, regarding the new rental inspection ordinance. Through this ordinance, landlords will be required to register with the city and undergo inspections every three years through a rental inspector authorized by the city.

The council members unanimously approved the first reading of the rental inspection ordinance. This ordinance will go to vote two more times before going into effect. The next city council meeting is at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16.

Jeremy Rounds was fully in support of the ordinance. He explained he hadn’t read the details of the ordinance, but he knew the idea behind it.

“For years we’ve had basically a voluntary rental inspection process, and voluntary basically means I can do it if I want,” Rounds said. “Working on projects in the community throughout the years, I know that volunteering means I’d rather not do it for most people, and you’ll get very few people volunteering for something usually.”

Rounds explained a rental property is a business and should therefore be regulated like any other business. He also said the “poor housing” options in Creston is decreasing the population.

“When we have poor housing conditions, it does not help our town grow, it does not make it easier to lure the types of businesses and industries to pay our workers more so they can afford better housing,” Rounds said. “To be honest with you, if we don’t grow our housing stock and improve our housing stock, our town will decline over time.”

The latest census has shown a decline in population, from 2010 to 2020 going down about 300. Rounds believes this is due to people moving out of town.

Rounds also suggested the city look into different grants that might help landlords make the needed fixes that inspections might require.

“I think those grants are going to be a lot easier to obtain if we say, the improvements that these landlords will be making will be commensurate with this ordinance that the city has to address the problem,” Rounds said. “I think that will capture the state of Iowa, Iowa Economic Development, other agencies like that that provide these grants, we now have a city trying to help itself and so we’re more willing to provide the grant funds to address these types of projects.”

Terry McKinney agreed with Rounds, saying inspections are needed, but he didn’t like the way in which the city was handling the process.

“I believe that we need to make sure we have safe housing for people that need to rent and stuff like that here in town,” McKinney said. “The problem that I have with it is how some houses that are 50 years old are going to be held to the same standard as some of the newer houses. It’s virtually impossible.”

McKinney said that the issues found in older houses will cause rent to increase, something many tenants can’t afford.

“Just in the last last year from me just stepping into this and obtaining a couple houses for rental purposes, housing costs in this town have literally jumped $300 within a year,” McKinney said. “I felt bad that the house that I just rented out at $750 a month because I was going for more like $600 because we’re in Creston, Iowa; we’re not in Des Moines.”

Forcing inspections on rental properties will bring prices up an extraordinary amount, he argued.

“I‘m on board with homeowners having their houses inspected and having to meet a certain standard, but if you’re constantly going in on some of these houses and fixing them, fixing them, pretty soon a one-bedroom house is going to cost someone $1,200 a month,” McKinney said. “My understanding is there’s people already charging that, and that’s crazy for Creston, Iowa. If you can go to Des Moines and rent a nice duplex for $800, $900, they’re not going to stick around Creston.”

Erin Wallace rents in Creston and explained her fears regarding the ordinance.

“I am for inspections, I am for safe housing, I deal with that on a daily basis with my job,” Wallace said. “I also am a low-income, single-parent family that can’t afford the fall-down of what this is going to cost me.”

Renter Ronda Campbell said that rising prices are making it almost impossible for her to retire.

“I‘m 64 years old and getting close to retirement, and I’m trying as hard as I can to save up a little bit of money for my retirement, but it seems like all the money that I try to put in retirement, things just keep going up,” Campbell said. “You see the food going up, housing’s going up, utilities are going up, and it just seems like, I don’t know how someone that lives paycheck to paycheck can even afford it.”

Campbell said that with inspections happening, her rent will be forced to go up. She explained that in the past, no other city she has lived in required rental inspections, yet all her dwellings have been satisfactory.

Loretta Harvey argued against the ordinance, including a packet of letters and emails from other community members in her argument.

“These people have voluntarily provided these communications,” Harvey said. “Some of them are anonymous as they are concerned about repercussions against them and their families. These people are frightened about what may happen in Creston.”

After the public hearing ended, Councilmember Jocelyn Blazek took the opportunity to address some of the concerns. Blazek is one of three council members on the committee regarding the rental ordinance. Also on the committee are Kiki Scarberry and Steve Wintermute.

“I believe that most of the houses are in the shape that they’re in because we don’t have minimum standards,” Blazek said. “Minimum standards prevent decay. Without the minimum standards, the houses are uninhabitable and the tenants lose their housing units. We’re not asking you to completely renovate properties, we’re just asking you to meet the minimum standard.”

She explained her concern with Harvey’s comment on fear of repercussions and retaliation.

“You say they’re afraid of coming up and speaking against this because of retaliation from us? They’re afraid of retaliation from landlords,” Blazek said. “I want to thank those who have spoken in favor, and I want to thank those who have respectfully spoken against. It takes a lot of courage to come up here for something when the majority of the people are against it.”

Blazek said there was a specific event in December that showed this issue, in which some against the ordinance “cornered an individual who spoke for this.”

“That’s not acceptable, that’s not ok, so I thank those of you that are here to respectfully here to consider your requests against,” Blazek said.

Blazek has worked for the child welfare system for more than 10 years, and doing so is what prompted her to want to enforce this ordinance. Her experience as a single mother also contributed to this

“I am a single parent who has lived paycheck to paycheck; I have rented in this town, and the conditions of many of the rentals 15 years ago were abysmal,” Blazek said. “I can’t imagine what some of them are like today without any sort of enforcement on some of them. I’ve seen some of the homes that these children and families are living in first hand, and they’re afraid to advocate for themselves.”

Scarberry addressed the concern regarding keeping the rental inspection position in town.

“Currently, due to staffing issues, all of our inspectors are from out of town,” Scarberry said. “Our building inspectors, all of our electrical inspections, all of our inspections are handled by outside people because we do not have anybody qualified. This is our current solution to that problem. We don’t have to stick with it forever.”

She also wanted to remind everyone the point of this ordinance was to keep people safe.

“That’s the thing that really drives home with me that I think we’re forgetting a little bit, these are minimum safety standards; these are making sure that it is safe for people to live in,” Scarberry said. “Waiting another year is another year someone could potentially be living in an unsafe house and they might not even know it. They have the right to be paying for something that’s safe.”