Officials say rental inspection program plans could come before Council later this spring

A long-awaited proposal for a city rental inspection program could be brought before City Council later this spring, Richmond Planning Director Kevin Vonck said Tuesday. 

The idea, which would let city inspectors examine residential rental units in certain districts suffering from blight and deterioration, has been discussed “every three years for the last 20 years,” Michelle Coward, a deputy director with the planning department, told a council committee that handles housing issues at its March 18 meeting. 

With roughly 57% of Richmonders renting their homes, any possible program could have significant impacts across the city. But it’s never come to fruition.

A 2014 proposal was withdrawn after it provoked concerns about privacy and questions about whether it would duplicate services code enforcement is supposed to provide. In the most recent push, City Council, spurred by growing alarm over housing shortages, passed a resolution in February 2023 asking then-Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration to develop the program. 

Since November of that year, little has happened. Councilwoman Ellen Robertson (6th District) said Tuesday that she’d been getting complaints that “we’ve been taking a long time to get to where we’re going and we still are not where we want to go.”

Paul Fleisher, a former Richmond Public Schools teacher and a member of the local chapter of Virginia Organizing, urged City Council to “finish this task as soon as possible.” 

“We must ensure that the existing affordable housing stock in Richmond is preserved and maintained,” he said. “The only way to do that is to hold the worst slumlords accountable for failing to keep their apartments in livable condition.” 

Vonck told The Richmonder other projects have kept the Department of Planning and Development Review from making much progress, but work is now moving again. 

Virginia law lets local governments set up residential rental inspection programs with certain restrictions. The locality has to designate particular areas where the inspections can occur; deploying them throughout the entire city or county isn’t an option. 

Districts also have to meet certain criteria. The local government has to determine that they contain rental units that are blighted or deteriorating and that inspections are “necessary to maintain safe, decent and sanitary living conditions.” Periodic inspections can only occur once a year, and rentals with no violations are exempt for the next four years. 

Henrico County established its inspection program in 2021 and has so far used it to target specific developments that have racked up high numbers of resident complaints. Fairfax City, by contrast, has designated entire neighborhoods as districts. 

While the broader labels can let officials crack down on a greater range of properties that may pose serious health and safety risks to residents, Vonck warned they can also “impact the perception of the neighborhood” and decisions about investment in it. 

Councilwoman Kenya Gibson (3rd District), however, said that unlike Henrico, “I don’t think we have just one or two problematic properties.” 

“If we were to take the approach of defining [districts] by property, I think we would be setting ourselves up to eventually be adding many over time,” she said. “I’m not opposed to that, but I do think it’s worth being aware.” 

Among the criteria the Planning Department has floated for determining whether properties are blighted or deteriorating are the number of building or health code violations or police and emergency responses they have had in the past four years and the number of tenants who have petitioned the commissioner of buildings to address poor living conditions. 

Even with an inspection program in place, officials are likely to face some hurdles, Coward and Vonck warned. Out-of-state landlords can be nonresponsive, and getting legal summons to them can prove “a brick wall,” said Coward. While the city can take the management companies they employ to court, bad-actor landlords have at times evaded that approach by simply firing their managers. 

Robertson also fretted about unintended consequences of the inspections. Tenants whose rental is found to be an immediate danger could find themselves with no housing or face rent increases imposed by the landlord to cover fixes, she worried. 

“If the rent goes up and they can’t pay, they don’t have housing,” she said. 

Vonck said that as Richmond’s housing market remains as attractive as it is, “one of the comments that we have heard is that, look, my landlord is raising the rent and is going to raise the rent regardless.

“The least they could do if they’re raising my rent is obviously give me a safe, sanitary place to live,” he said.