Supervisor Duncan wants Albemarle to consider creating rental inspection program

July will mark five years since the Albemarle Board of Supervisors adopted a policy related to housing with objectives ranging from “increase the supply of housing” to “promote healthy, sustainable communities and housing.”

On May 20, Jack Jouett District Supervisor Sally Duncan said she wanted the county to study creation of a a county program to hold landlords accountable for property maintenance.

“The General Assembly passed legislation in 2004 that allows municipalities to have a rental inspection program,” Duncan said. “There’s about 18 other municipalities in Virginia that have this program already.”

According to Duncan and state code, localities designate rental inspection districts based on certain criteria. A locality can either hire its own inspectors or contract out to a third-party.

“ The big thing is that it gets rid of retaliation by landlords,” Duncan said. “We’re the county, we’re going to inspect our rental properties, make sure that there’s not, mold or rodents or infestations and that people have safe, clean places to live.”

Duncan said Danville is one such locality that has a program in place.That city has five districts in place and three inspectors.

“The City of Danville Inspections Division feels that early prevention of deteriorating housing is the goal of this program,” reads the website. “The program achieves compliance of health, safety and welfare code violations in/on residential rental property that result in a threat to the occupant’s safety, threat to the structural integrity of the building, and negative impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.”

Duncan said she wanted staff to investigate the possibility.

Supervisor Ann Mallek said she also wanted to find out more information and said it could be especially useful for one type of residence.

“I’m very interested in finding out what the possibilities are for the protection of these individuals and if it can also someday evolve into some policy to protect mobile home park people, particularly, who are especially vulnerable to manipulation in this way, especially when the properties change hands,” Mallek said.

Supervisor Mike Pruitt said the work is important but it could be expensive and politically hard to set up.

“I’d still want to know the cost.” Pruitt said. “It would involve multiple very specifically-trained staff that we don’t have. We would have to pick the overlay district, which could be messy. And then the remedy you get at the end might not be satisfying.”

Pruitt said he would also like the county to consider creating an office to advocate for tenants and that the two functions might be combined.

Supervisor Ned Gallaway said the time to decide on whether to move forward with such a program is during the budget. He said that while the county continues to reassess and restructure housing programs, this may be another item to throw into the mix.

“This potentially could be wrapped in to building on some work by supervisors into that as a reasonable piece, knowing that any costs or anything like that would simply would have to be addressed during next, the next budget season,” Gallaway said.

Such a rental-inspection program is already one of the identified steps in Housing Albemarle under objective 4: “Preserve and maintain the county’s aging housing stock, and existing communities” with multiple steps outlined in Strategy 4e.

Deputy County Executive Ann Wall said staff will do the analysis to determine what setting up such a program would cost.

“We are certainly able to scope out what we would do to research this endeavor and bring back to you sort of the tasks that we would do and a timeline and of course anything related to inspections would, we would need to talk about implementation cost which would then lead into the budget,” Wall said.

Supervisors are expected to have a long conversation about Housing Albemarle in August. Wall said it is not likely the work on the rental inspection program would be complete by then.

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