Adam Duvernay

The News Journal

Wilmington officials are considering required training for landlords.

Backers of the proposed legislation say landlords are on the front line of crime prevention.

Property owners worry about additional regulation and stifling business.

Wilmington may soon put pressure on its landlords, the owners of more than half the city's homes, to step up their contribution in the uphill struggle against crime.

Coming across the desks of City Council members is a revision to city code mandating landlords complete a free certification program within a year of receiving or renewing their licenses. Though the final details are being hammered out ahead of the revision's first committee appearance in July, it's already being shopped around — with mixed reviews — to the city's landlords.

The training would be based on a program developed by police in Mesa, Arizona, and used nationwide. That full-day program focuses on crime prevention theory, resident screening, identifying gang and drug activity, eviction methods and working with local public safety officials.

Backers of the proposed legislation say landlords are on the front line of crime because they have the ability to spot and stop drug and gang activity in the homes they own. The new rule, they say, will especially benefit newbies in the rental industry who may not know how to screen tenants before signing a lease or identify trouble after.

It's not an entirely novel concept in Delaware. In Wilmington, the housing authority is considering similar measures for the landlords who participate in its housing choice voucher program and the state's Attorney General's Office has offered the training since 2012, when late Attorney General Beau Biden promoted participation as a crime fighting effort.

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“Our message to landlords is clear – you have responsibilities to the communities where you own rental properties,” Biden said in 2012.

That’s the same message the city legislation is meant to send, said its author, at-large Councilwoman Maria Cabrera, who also uses softer signals to the landlords of safer, sturdier and more prosperous investments.

“If you’re a good landlord, or if you’re a property owner, you’ve made an investment,” Cabrera said. “Who do you want living next to you? Who do you want to own those properties? If it’s not going to be a homeowner and it’s going to be a rental, don’t you want it to be someone like yourself who follows the law?”

Cabrera, who is running for mayor in the fall, already has heard grumbling about more regulation and wants to include some kind of incentive to make the prospect palatable for property owners.

The landlords this rule will affect are people like Brian O’Neill, who after 20 years of business owns 70 properties in Wilmington.

Education, especially for novices entering the rental game, is important for exactly the reasons the city ordinance in its current and potentially-amended form exists, O’Neill said. Spotting crime, navigating bureaucracy and finding local resources need to be taught.

But he’s a small business owner.

“The term ‘mandatory’ will thwart business growth. It will end up creating a barrier for any investors to buy in the city. The city already has a bad enough rap on several fronts, why create another one?” O’Neill said.

Nearly 54 percent of Wilmington's housing units are rental properties, and some portions of the city have rates above 70 percent. In north New Castle County, 45 percent of residents are renters compared to just 12.5 percent in the southern half. Delaware as a whole maintains a rental rate just above 28 percent.

One of those renters is Morgan Hall, who's lived with her daughters on East 22nd Street in Wilmington for about two years. She's a Section 8 tenant and supports the plan to provide guidance to landlords.

"A lot of landlords around here could use a lot of training," she said.

Though making a relation of causality between a large rental stock and higher or increasing crime is difficult, Regional Economist for the Center of Economic and Policy Study at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service Terance Rephann made a study of the issue because of long-held public impressions, a rise in "absentee landlords" and high rates of tenancy in neighborhoods with high crime.

"There is definitely a correlation between the two, but it's more of a selection issue. Poor people that are more prone to crime sort of get selected into rental properties because they don't have the income, they don't have the down payment for a home, they don't have the savings to actually become a property owner," Rephann said.

But that correlation wasn't the focus of his study. Rephann's research was on Cumberland, Maryland, where he said a pattern of non-local and high-volume landlords appeared during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s. Those types of landlords, he said, generated a disproportionate number of the problem properties.

The vast majority of Cumberland's rental properties, upwards of 75 percent, didn't have any history of police contact, Rephann said. Less than 10 percent of the total rental property stock had a record of multiple contacts with police.

Mandatory landlord training was a piece of the solution Cumberland decided to adopt, Rephann said. The program was grandfathered in so existing landlords didn't have to participate, but those seeking a rental permit were charged a small fee and sent to a class on code, crime, property management, screening and contract enforcement.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't as stringent as we would have liked. As you can imagine, the landlord associations were up in arms, so as a compromise we eased our physical inspection programs a little bit," Rephann said. "The owners are guardians of the properties, and more importantly, they're guardians of the neighborhoods. If they're not performing that guardianship role, people are more likely to get lax and violate the social norms of the neighborhood."

Though he hasn't seen the details and wanted to reserve final judgment, Delaware Apartment Association President Paul Chantler already is skeptical of the proposed mandate. He said landlords statewide are willing to do their part for crime prevention, but he won't write a blank check of support when there already are laws in place and training available.

"To make it mandatory, my first response to that is why? What is behind this? Anytime you're talking mandatory, you're talking money," Chantler said.

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Chantler rejects out of hand crime can be pinned onto landlords, and he said the perception of the two being related is outdated as Americans increasingly choose renting over owning for personal reasons as much as financial.

And Frank Brevoort, president of the landlord association Greater Wilmington Housing Providers, said he's not sure how much a single class could teach a 30-year veteran of the rental industry like himself. He acknowledges crime is a problem — bad for both business and the community — but fighting it already is in a smart landlord's best interest.

"It's not an easy thing to deal with, but obviously if you have a house that's full of drug pushers, then that brings down the neighborhood and makes it difficult to rent the other houses and they go vacant. That block becomes a blight on the neighborhood, and that's a problem," Brevoort said. "I don't know that we need any more regulation. I think there's probably enough already on the books. It's how do you get the appropriate people engaged?"

Already in Delaware law are protections and obligations for both landlords and tenants.

Landlords are required to conform to local law, provide safe and sanitary conditions and make repairs and arrangements necessary to keep the property in good condition in standing with the law unless otherwise noted in the lease. The law allows for but does not mandate screening of tenants through credit or criminal background checks. Tenants are protected against certain inquiries from prospective landlords relative to discrimination law.

Cabrera said a landlord can follow the letter of the law and still maintain a nuisance property, willfully or otherwise. Moreover, she pointed to first-time players in the rental game who don't know how to screen their tenants or the finer points of the business model.

"We have so many great landlords and people who have invested in the city to transform blocks and homes. I'm amazed at some of the architecture in our city. It's not those landlords. It's when we allow property owners, including businesses like liquor stores and corner stores, to conduct business in an unlawful way, the sense of lawlessness now has taken over a neighborhood," Cabrera said.

Keeping landlords honest is a statewide effort.

The Wilmington Housing Authority offers a program which pays a portion of income-qualified tenants' rent with private landlords, but Acting Executive Director Karen Spellman said those property owners oftentimes believe WHA is responsible for maintenance and monitoring. But that isn't the case, and so she wants to mandate training in the future.

"It would put the landlord on notice they are responsible if that unit is called for nuisance, it is incumbent upon them to make sure they address that tenant and that they manage that tenant," Spellman said. "A lot of times these absentee landlords collect their rent via mail, and they do no monitoring of the tenant or the property, especially if it's one that receives Section 8 because they are sure that every month they're at least going to get a check from the Housing Authority. For those on the private market, they're not really interested in the property. They're just interested in collecting the rent."

Dover offers free landlord training through the city and the state Department of Justice as part of the city's Safe Communities initiative.

In Newark, new city legislation meant to give inspectors the power access to homes to which they've been previously denied is chaffing landlords there. The city argues its inspectors are being denied access to check for health and safety concerns, and landlords are calling their legislative action overreach and even a breach of the 4th Amendment.

And in Edgemoor Gardens north of Wilmington, a community where about 80 percent of its 380 units are rentals, Delaware Housing Coalition Executive Director Patricia Kelleher said stricter rules on who buys properties there could affect the crime rate.

"There's some really egregious things that go on there. The landlords evict by changing locks. People who rent there are terrified of complaining about things that aren't working, even really serious things like electrical problems or plumbing problems," Kelleher said. "One of the things we've been trying to do with that community is reach out to landlords to train them about managing their properties better, taking better care of their tenants and how in the end a better business practice for them."

Landlords should be held accountable to a point, O’Neill said, when there's crime going on in their properties, but through a police investigation which targets whether they were contributing or encouraging it. He said landlords shouldn't be expected to act like police officers.

"If you look at the true absentee landlords, who never shows up at his house and just collects a check, there's a huge chance there could be some things going on at his property that aren't kosher. A contentious landlord will check in, even if it's just to see you still have four walls standing. Doing periodic checks on your property, that's just common business sense," O’Neill said. "It's hard for them to enforce it lumping in good landlords with the bad because the low-hanging fruit is the good landlords."

Contact Adam Duvernay at (302) 324-2785 or aduvernay@delawareonline.com.

Wilmington rental training proposal