Landlords could face tougher regulation

After seven years of lobbying by IU Student Legal Services, amendments to Bloomington housing code to put more responsibility on landlords will soon be considered by the city council. \nJohn Irvine, the director of SLS, said these amendments would put a stop to many problems with landlords, such as unfair charges for repairs that fall under the duties of the landlord.\n"One of the major things we are trying to accomplish to make it clear what maintenance duties a landlord has to perform and which ones are the responsibility of the tenants," Irvine said.\nIrvine said in many cases tenants are being charged for what is normal wear and tear.\nOne such example is the re-painting of walls. Irvine said many residents are being charged for or forced to repaint walls that are only slightly damaged.\n"Tenants should only be responsible if they do something like kick the wall and knock a hole in it," Irvine said. "If you get little scuff marks on the wall, it's normal, but at a lot of places tenants are getting charged for that. I don't think you can have a couch against the wall and not get scuffmarks."\nIn addition, Irvine said there are a tremendous number of landlords in town who charge tenants for replacing light bulbs. In all of these residences, the leases say the landlord is responsible for normal wear and tear. \n"When does a normal light bulb exceed normal wear and tear?" Irvine said. "I suppose if you smashed the light bulbs with a baseball bat, then it would be the tenant's responsibility, but I don't think many people do that."\nIrvine added that many of these places charge up to $5 to replace a simple light bulb. \nOther damages he said tenants are unfairly charged for are Venetian blinds broke by simply pulling it up and down and shampooing the carpet even when it does not have any stains or burns. \nIrvine also said that in many cases these damages are not corrected by landlords because not all of the tenants move out. \n"If you have five tenants living in a house and three move out, a lot of times the landlords don't come in a bring the house up to code standards," Irvine said. "If you go through two or three years of that, the house can get really run down."\nIrvine adds that he is trying to build a penalty into the housing code that would penalize landlords for the failure of inspection and repair for each change of occupancy.\nMany members of the city council agree that there needs to be amendments to the housing code because it has been so long since it has been updated. \n"We are working on amendments to the housing code, because we need to add certain requirements to relationship between landlords and tenants," City Council member Tim Mayer said. "It currently sits with City Council attorney (Daniel Sherman). It is inching forward and we are starting to look at it informally." \nStill, not every member feels these changes are necessary. \n"The city of Bloomington already has a very detailed maintenance code, that includes all these provisions," City council member Jason Banach said. "We have cyclical inspections every five years. We are one of only three communities in entire state that have provisions for rental inspection policy."\nIrvine said he still feels more should be done to place responsibility back on the landlords.\n"It's not a tenant's job to live in a place and then bring it back to restoration standards," Irvine said. "That's the landlord's job."\nFor more information how to protect yourself when choosing a residency, check out http://www.indiana.edu/~sls/llt.html.