BELLOWS FALLS — A proposal to establish fees per unit on landlords, authored by Trustee Deb Wright and put before the Board of Trustees, drew a large number of landlord and tenants who told the board it was an “insulting” and “embarrassing” document and “should be scrapped.”
The board voted to do just that to Wright's proposal, which called, in part, for “a rental housing impact fee” of one month's rent per apartment per year and excluded owner-occupied residencies.
Wright voted against her own proposal, saying that it had “gotten people's attention,” which was her intent.
About a dozen landlords showed up to the board meeting on Jan. 8, in response to the proposal. No one who spoke supported it.
“I'm not happy with the tone of the document,” Trustee Stefan Golec told Wright. “It sounds like class warfare,” said Golec, who declined to support the draft, first presented to the board Dec. 11.
Wright explained to the board that her intent was to create a discussion about “what to do to raise funds for improvements” to village housing.
Associations have been made by the Bellows Falls Improvement Committee (BFIC) between multi-family housing rentals, out-of-state owners, and crime.
The group maintains that the condition of village housing stock results in consequences that raise the cost of municipal services to taxpayers.
Wright said she attends these meetings and is responding to concerns raised.
Discussions brought before the boards, since their inception in October, by the BFIC have been addressing some broad perceptions: a degrading housing stock; owners' lax upkeep of trees, shrubs, and trash; and out-of-state rental owners not being held responsible for maintaining their buildings.
In December, Rockingham Selectboard member Josh Hearne, noting that he felt a “lack of focus” from the group, suggested that its members submit to the board a list of their goals. He asked them to suggest to the board how they would like to see those goals carried out.
Unsafe housing
Housing discussions and actions have been ongoing with Health Officer Ellen Howard.
Howard's involvement was mandated by both boards to follow up on an unsafe housing list kept by Municipal Manager Tim Cullenen. Howard has served several unsafe building and health orders to landlords since last June.
In August, owners Veronica and Scott Cooper of Pinecliffe Holdings LLC of Plymouth, Mass., and Golden Colorado of 42 Green St., were served a health order by the town, and three families were evicted.
The next Joint Board meeting will be addressing what next steps to take.
Golec noted to Wright that the Rockingham town plan addresses housing and acknowledges the large number of rental housing units. The village also has had an unsafe building ordinance on the books since the late 1970s.
Golec cautioned Wright, saying as a landlord himself, he sees his tenants as “partners” who give him rent in exchange for maintenance of the buildings which keeps them safe.
He said fees would just drive out honest, hardworking people who would be unlikely to afford a rent increase.
“We live in hard economic times,” Golec told Wright. “You need to understand the circumstances for landlords and tenants alike.”
Smith offered one alternative solution that could help landlords come up with maintenance funding on their own: to waive water and sewer fees.
'Inappropriate'
Trustee Colin James took exception to Wright's inclusion of autistic children as an example of the cause of increased costs associated with poorly maintained properties.
Wright's document read, “...families move into the building with x number of children. One family has five autistic children (true story). As these children are enrolled in school, the Special Ed costs soar thousands and thousands of dollars as state mandated....”
Wright, in her document, associated low-income families with costs incurred in special education and abating lead contamination.
James, calling the example inappropriate, asked Wright what statistics she was referencing.
Wright shot back, “I have a grandchild with autism...this is a maximum example. They are a massive drain on services.”
Public comment
Cindy Riendeau, herself a renter, said she found the correlations between low-income people and bad behavior offensive.
She also noted a deep concern that the “people who run this town would come with such a document. Targeting low-income people is just wrong.”
Referring to one section of Wright's document proposing to establish a form of a revolving loan fund for the “working poor unable to purchase” a home, Leslie Salmon, a property manager, told the board, “It is disingenuous to assume that all renters” would like to be homeowners.
Salmon stated that many responsible renters hold good jobs and that the Board of Trustees should be careful with stereotypes.
She also stated that she felt most landlords do the best they can for their tenants, adding, “any punitive action would only be passed on to the tenants, and this is not fair.”
Mike Kemp, an employee of Stuart Property Management, countered a suggestion that entities such as the Windham and Windsor Housing Trust displaced people from their homes.
“This not true,” he said. “Not once have we ever put someone out and not tried to help them” find housing if they did not want to return once renovations were done.
Kemp stated that he felt that housing in Bellows Falls has come a long way over the past several years.
A letter from Christopher S. Moore was entered into the record by Golec, over protests by Wright.
“Tenants with lower income levels are a clear target throughout 'the proposal,'” his response reads, noting misconceptions “smattered” throughout the documents he wanted to clear up.
“Private landlords do not own 'Section 8 housing,'” he wrote. “[T]enants qualify for a Section 8 voucher,” a designation that “follows the tenant,” who may rent in a building if it qualifies for the program under applicable building and health codes.
Moore clarified more terminology, noting that “low-income housing is housing with covenants,” where “a tenant can rent an apartment […] if he or she meets certain low-income criteria.”
Moore noted the history of the buildings in Bellows Falls in response to Wright's suggestion that some of the three-story buildings in the village be turned into single-family dwellings.
“Not everyone owned a paper mill or lived in a Victorian,” he said, referring to mill workers who would have made up most of the populace of the mill town during its heyday in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
He wrote that “many, if not most, of” the multiple-family dwellings were designed and built to be multiple-family dwellings.
That, he wrote, is “true for any flat roofed triple decker” and “any dwelling with the two or three original staircases and separate entryways.”
“The idea that BF is 'impacted' by multi-family dwellings […] is a myth,” he said, noting that there are fewer apartments today than there were 40 years ago.
Wright told Trustees that she hoped the newly formed Housing Research Committee (HRC), a purely “fact finding” Trustee-endorsed committee chaired by Trustee Andrew Smith, would be able to clarify some of her document's assertions.
Smith's housing research committee appointed three members last week, and is still looking for a fourth, a tenant, but will go ahead and start meeting within the month.
He reiterated the intent to sort fact from fiction and bring committee findings back to the board “with no preconception” of how those findings are put to use.
Smith has been clear since his original proposal that other than collecting housing-related facts in the village, the committee has no other agenda.