Hayward To Consider Rent Registry

In Which: We explain what a Rental Registry is and how it could work in Hayward, Councilmember Goldstein is concerned about privacy, And Mayor Salinas says he'd stop the registry if he could.

Collecting Data On Hayward Rental Landscape

On March 20th, the Housing Policy and Resource Committee (HPRC) discussed whether or not a Rental Registry should be considered by the full City Council. Some Councilmembers were concerned about the effectiveness of a Rental Registry and wanted more data on successes in other cities. In the end, the Committee pushed it to the full City Council to weigh in and encouraged Staff to bring more data.

If approved by the City Council, Hayward would join the likes of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and Richmond which already have registries. But let’s understand what a Rental Registry is and what it could mean for tenants and landlords in Hayward.

What Is A Rental Registry?

A Rental Registry is a tool for the City to keep track of the local housing landscape. It usually collects information like landlord and tenant contact information, rental information, information about the unit, and information about evictions. There may be other information gathered, depending on the City’s needs, but generally speaking it’s just some basic information about what’s being rented, by whom, and to whom.

There are a lot of reasons Cities might need this information. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many landlords never received rent-relief payments that they were promised. For some, it was difficult to track down who owned what and how to contact them. It can also help enforce the laws that the City already has on the books.

For example, Hayward has a Residential Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RRSO) which means that, for certain units, landlords can’t raise the rent by more than 5% per year. But enforcing RRSO relies on tenant complaints, which is a bit of an issue. First you have to know if your unit is covered by the RRSO, then you need to know who to contact. You also need to know if your landlord has been banking their rent increases, if there’s a Code Enforcement staffer available, and you should have your landlord’s contact info because the City may not have it.

Editor’s Note: City Staff shared that there is a Rent Review Database available on the City website.

Given all of that, there’s a good chance that enforcing the RRSO doesn’t happen as often as it should and that people get displaced or evicted illegally as a result.

The data is also helpful for the City making planning decisions. For example, there was a number tossed around that Hayward has 23,000 rental units. But that’s just an estimate based on Census and American Community Survey data. That data is an annual spot check, at best, and totally voluntary. Editor’s Note: City Staff has informed us that the 23,000 figure is generated using Alameda County Assessor’s Office data and “looking at several factors including the property address, mailing address, building effective year, county use description, and number of units,” according to an email sent by City Staff.

The City has to work hard to figure out how many rental properties there are with all this data—and Assessor info may be out of date. And that means they’re making guesses when they make changes to zoning, housing policy, where to allow businesses, and what services people need and where. Not having housing data also means the City misses out on some important grants; they’re leaving free money on the table because they may not know if they meet the requirements.

What Would Hayward’s Rental Registry Look Like?

That’s still an open question. Right now, City Staff put together a list of information that they could collect.

At the end of the day, the City Council gets to decide what data should be included or not. They could add more data to the list, or they could remove things that they don’t like. It’s still in the planning phases.

The idea will be to have some kind of way for landlords and tenants to put in their information—both online and via some paper form. Some of that information would be public and some of it wouldn’t. That hasn’t been decided yet, either. It’s possible that there will be a place for prospective tenants to look up a unit they want to rent and see some more information about it. It’s also possible it’ll be completely private. It’s too early to know.

This Sounds Complicated And Expensive

And all of this data has to be managed by someone. So Staff are recommending that the City hire 2.5 new Housing Staff to handle it. A Senior Secretary would handle data entry and administrative questions—how to fill out forms, where to submit things, etc. A Community Programs Specialist would deal with landlord-tenant outreach and communication and also run workshops to teach people about the registry and how to use it. Finally a half-time person would be the Housing Division Manager who would supervise the staff and deal with sensitive matters that the other staffers couldn’t handle.

All of that would be paid for by a fee increase—no impact on the General Funds. Right now all rental properties in Hayward are supposed to pay a Rent Review Fee. For units that are covered by the RRSO it’s $66 per year and for non-covered units it’s $32 per year. For better or worse, the RRSO allows the landlord to pass along half of that fee to tenants ($33 and $16 per year, respectively). That helps to pay for the staffing that is supposed to enforce the RRSO, but remember that only relies on complaints.

Staff recommends increasing the fees to $140/year for covered units and $90/year for non-covered units (an increase of $74 and $58 per year, respectively). That means a tenant would be paying less than $6 per month to help cover the cost of the Rental Registry—the landlord doesn’t have to pass along the fee, but they definitely will.

What If Landlords Don’t Pay?

On the enforcement end, the Staff Report left a lot to be desired. They can impose a late fee of up to 50% of the unpaid fee (for a maximum fine of $70) and any covered unit wouldn’t be able to collect any rent increases. But there’s no collection method for anyone who fails to pay.

Staff recommended levying an assessment against any property that doesn’t pay its Rent Review fees. But other cities have gone a bit farther. Not allowing rent increases is a pretty standard practice. Many others don’t allow an eviction—even when the tenant fails to pay rent—if the unit isn’t registered. These give landlords an incentive to pay this very minor fee and get registered.

Is This A Good Thing?

That depends. Do you think it’s important for the City to know what the rental housing landscape looks like in Hayward? Do you think it’s important for tenants to know if their unit is covered under the RRSO? Do you think bad-actor landlords should be held to account for the over 250 complaints tenants filed last year? Do you think it’s important to have the ability to track units with lead paint or asbestos or other toxic materials that were really common in homes built around a certain time?

Let’s find out what the Committee thought. As a reminder, the HPRC is a sub-committee of the City Council. That means there are three members: Councilmembers George Syrop and Dan Goldstein, and Mayor Mark Salinas. Most decisions don’t get made here, but it’s a place to refine a proposal that can go to the full City Council afterward.

A Community Group Weighs In

Two members of the community group House Hayward Now attended the meeting and spoke in support of the Rental Registry. Ro Aguilar said that it was important to hold problematic landlords to account and framed the minor fee increase as a business expense. “[It’s] the cost of doing business in the City,” she said. “They’re a business, so they should pay for their business.”

Vasko Yorgov, also of House Hayward Now, reminded the Committee that a Rental Registry is a common practice. “It’s not reinventing the wheel, right?” he said. “There are other cities that have done this.” He said it could be used for the City’s future housing policy development. “[We should] arm ourselves with tools.”

Concerned About Privacy

Councilmember Goldstein honed in on privacy concerns. “My concern is primarily around the ballooning cost,” he said, “[and] information security liability.” He cited EU data privacy laws as a concern—in case there are EU citizens who own rental property in Hayward—and encouraged contracting out to a 3rd party. “My recommendation would be to see if there is a 3rd party, see if their security protocols cover international as well as the United States… that means we have less risk for collecting that data.” However, the City already handles basic contact information for landlords through the business license application, it’s just housed in a different department.

Staff cautioned against contracting out the Rental Registry data. “We would lose some critical oversight,” they said. They cited equity concerns as a primary reason to handle the information in-house.

Mayor Salinas was supportive of data gathering and how it can help the City. “Data is great,” he said, “I love data.” But he also worried about privacy, comparing gathering contact information to city-wide video surveillance. “Look at the pressure we get when we start talking about putting traffic cameras or we start putting cameras around town or the Flock cameras,” he said. “My concern is there’s other areas that we’re hyper-conservative about or hyper-sensitive to but there’s other areas where we’re full throttle ahead when it comes to collecting data and sharing data.”

He then clarified that it was an issue around the renter’s privacy. “I was a renter for many years,” he said, “and I don’t know how comfortable I would be if I had to go to a database to report on my own apartment. I don’t know.”

But the bulk of his concern focused on landlords. “Have we run this by the landlords or landlord groups?” he asked. Staff said, “I did tell them that we are going to be talking about a rental registry… and I told them to come here to give their input and thoughts.” But no landlords were present during the meeting.

Despite this, Mayor Salinas insisted that landlords should have significant input on the idea of a rental registry. “I personally feel,” he said, “going to landlords as a default to finance this—I think we would really have to spend some time talking with them and really vetting this with them.” However, when the City passed the Sidewalk Vendor ordinance, the Mayor had no issue with the minimal input from sidewalk vendors themselves.

Investing Resources Addressing A Top Issue

Councilmember Syrop pointed out that the cost of living is one of the top issues in the City, and a Rental Registry can help address it. “Public safety and the cost of living are the two biggest issues in our City,” he said. “We don’t blink when it comes time to budget 19 police officers and recruit them in 1 year. I think this is our other crisis and we have a small housing team. I think this is a way to strategically grow our housing team with a purpose.”

He also said that the lack of enforcement for the current RRSO and other rental issues was a problem. “Proactive enforcement and compliance is, to me, the most important part of this,” he said. “I’m not interested in [going through this process] to have something that has no teeth.” He expressed support for the enforcement mechanisms from other cities—like denying rent increases—and he also stressed that he wants all rental units in the City to be covered. “So we have really robust data,” he said.

Despite the fees paying to grow the Housing Department by over 25%, Mayor Salinas worried about the workload on Staff. “Can you handle another project like this?” he asked. Staff repeated that they could, “With the additional staff and housing manager… increasing the workload does increase the need for staffing.” They also stressed that implementing the registry would save staff time on enforcement and tracking down contact information for compliance issues.

Mayor Salinas seemed to need absolute clarity around the funding. “The funding for these positions—the funding would come from where?” he asked. “The fees,” Staff said. “The increase in the proposed fees,” he said. “It would be proposed to be 100% cost recovery,” Staff said.

Still the Mayor continued to be concerned about workload. “My central concern is the amount of work that the housing department is already doing right now,” he said.

Couldn’t We Use The Money For Something Else, Actually?

“[What if] rather than collecting that money to have a database,” Councilmember Goldstein said, “we had a different way of allocating those funds to help people to meet their housing needs. Might that be a better strategy?” It was unclear how that would work considering renters would be funding half of it themselves.

Mayor Salinas later proposed a similar idea, positioning the registry against a $3,000,000 direct assistance campaign to renters—despite renters funding half of it. “I would [do direct assistance] rather than investing in an infrastructure,” he said. —this rent registry where the majority of the resources that we are generating is being applied to this infrastructure rather than the tenants.” He compared it to the homelessness funding, where there seems to be little traction and a lot of well-paid nonprofits. “If we are going to go down the road of fees, who are we helping? Where are these dollars going? For me, fundamentally, that’s where I’m stuck,” the Mayor said.

Councilmember Syrop agreed with the argument around direct tenant assistance, but stressed that a rental registry can help track the impact of those kinds of initiatives. “Let’s up the Community Services budget tomorrow,” he said. “Let’s do that instead. But how do we know it actually worked? Or if it just went to a bunch of professionals.”

Instead of comparing this to direct assistance, Councilmember Syrop suggested comparing it to other infrastructure projects. “We’re looking at spending $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 for a potential new police building,” he said, “which I understand the need for. It’s infrastructure. We’re investing in that infrastructure for the long term benefit… this is a much smaller investment by comparison that affects 47% of the residents of Hayward.”

The Mayor was strongly supportive of Measure K1 and spoke effusively about how important it is to invest in infrastructure for the benefit of future residents.

But What About The Evidence?

Councilmember Goldstein remained unconvinced that the rental registry effective. “Right now there is no proof,” he said, “that it actively does what we’re hoping that it’ll do.” Despite the entire point being data collection, he continued to stress the need for evidence. “We’re saying that the evidence isn’t there.”

“Until we can say with concrete evidence that having a rental registry will actually solve a problem,” Councilmember Goldstein said, “and do it in the most efficient way possible, we can’t in good conscience to the tax payers of this community, say we’re going to allocate $3,000,000 to it.” As a fee, the only people paying for it would be renters and landlords. Homeowners who aren’t landlords would not have to pay to support the rental registry.

Councilmember Syrop responded, “This is really to prevent illegal rent increases from happening and be able to enforce it better when they do.” But Councilmember Goldstein insisted, “We don’t even have a scope of the problem. We don’t know because we don’t have the data.” He seemed unaware that the rental registry would provide that data.

Despite his concerns, Councilmember Goldstein supported bringing the rental registry to the full Council. Mayor Salinas, however, was unconvinced. “I was not ready to bring this to a full work session,” he said. “If it was up to me, I’d stop it here.”

We reached out to House Hayward Now (HHN) for a response to the HPRC’s discussion. “Hayward renters deserve transparency, accountability, and fairness in the rental market,” HHN Chair Vasko Yorgov said. “That is why House Hayward Now has been proud to champion a Hayward rental registry since it was first proposed. We call on Hayward renters to join us in urging the City Council to support implementing a rental registry.”

The Rental Registry will go before the full City Council sometime in June.