Officials also seeking changes to legislation
Last year, legislators delayed implementing Rhode Island’s lead law, giving landlords and property owners time to take a required three-hour course and remedy any lead paint problems. But now, with three months remaining before the deadline, officials are requesting another delay and changes to the law.
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By July 1, every property owner and landlord in the state who owns a property or residence built before 1978 was required to have completed a three-hour lead abatement course. But public outreach and the course didn’t start until last May, and there are 145,000 rental units that were built before 1978, some of which would require lead abatement. According to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, only 3,800 units are currently in compliance. The association is also suggesting some changes be made to the legislation.
“Massachusetts has a law that targets only homes with small children,” said Monica Staaf, legal counsel for the RIAR, which was successful last year in getting the delay. “One of the problems with the current law is that it applies to rental units where there are seniors, students and adults living. Why target them?”
The association has proposed a number of changes, which will be considered by a Lead Study Commission that was formed last summer by the state. Members were appointed early this year and the commission met for the first time in March.
In addition to postponing the implementation date until July 1, 2006, RIAR has proposed to change the scope of the law so that only rental units with children under age 6 residing in them would be affected.
“Our concern is repeat inspections” which are expensive and hurt landlords who rent to college students, Staaf said. “Every time a tenant moves out, landlords have to hire a lead inspector to check for lead paint. So you could have two identical units, one that has to have an inspection every year and one that has an inspection maybe every 10 years, depending on the tenants.” The RIAR is requesting that the commission reconsider the need for the annual inspections.
The association has also suggested that the vacation rental exemption be made permanent. The R.I. Housing Resources Commission has changed its regulations to exempt short-term rentals that are rented for no more than 31 days per year to the same person. Legislators have also proposed a bill to exempt vacation property rented for 120 days or other periods of time to exempt non-winterized cottages from the new law.
Revising the class requirement of every landlord and property owner to take the three-hour compliance course is another request. For those who decide to hire a licensed lead contractor to do the mitigation could be exempt, while those who want to do their own work can take the course. Staaf has also suggested that legislators examine the impact of this law on affordability; focus on the cities with the highest occurrences of lead poisoning; and provide technical assistance to landlords. Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls had the highest number of cases in 2004, according to a R.I. Department of Health report.
The situation has thousands of landlords waiting for some resolution.
“Lots are in limbo waiting to see if they’re going to be covered by this,” before they take the course and remediate the lead in their homes, she said. “If you’re a landlord and you need to replace the refrigerator, fix the roof, comply with new fire codes and the lead law, if you can’t do it all, you need to prioritize.”
Landlords Lois Chrystie and Carol Northup, sisters who have been renting out the upper floor of their historic family home at 10 Howard Ave. and the smaller 10 1/2 Howard Ave. in Pawtucket since 1984, had to have the exteriors of both homes stripped and repainted, which cost them about $20,000. The two, who are in their late 70s to early 80s, had to take out an equity loan to finance the work. Chrystie lives on the first floor of the home. The smaller rental home has already been painted, and crews are stripping the paint off 10 Howard Ave.
“We knew we’d have to do this,” Northup said. “When you’re given a deadline, you don’t know” that it might be postponed. “The law needs a little refining. We certainly don’t want this to happen to children … and there are lots of negligent landlords who have just let their properties go.”
Both sisters said they’ve resisted raising the rent to help pay back the loan, but both are retired and use both homes to just break even on maintenance and other expenses.
“It’s more important to have quality tenants,” Northup said. The two women living in 10 1/2 Howard have been there for about a year; the tenant before that lived there for more than a decade, so when she left, Northup and Chrystie did a lot of work on the apartment and made it lead-safe.
“I don’t really like the inspections every year,” Chrystie said. “And a lot of people are making money off of this.”
“They should be more selective about how often they do inspections,” Northup added. “When you impose laws like this, people start cheating. I think they’re being unrealistic.”
Staaf said the commission will write the formal recommendations to the state in the form of an amendment to the lead law, with some resolution possible by June, one month before the scheduled deadline.
