WORCESTER, MA — Worcester city councilors thinned the rental registry law they passed unanimously two years ago, and will allow an unknown number of rental properties to be exempt from registering and undergoing some safety inspections.
The changes made Tuesday follow months of protests by landlords and some councilors — including councilors who are either landlords or work in real estate — after the city officially launched the rental registry at a landlord summit in March.
Members of the council’s Economic Development Committee held hearings over the last two months on several changes to the registry, and those changes were brought to council Tuesday with the backing of City Manager Eric Batista’s administration. Some of the key changes include:
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The exemptions for two and three-family owner-occupied homes proved to be the most controversial change to the program. District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj — who along with At-Large Councilor Thu Nguyen were the sole “no” votes against the changes — said there’s no evidence to support that owner-occupied properties are safer than ones owned by out-of-town landlords.
“Our job is to protect tenants from unsanitary conditions,” Haxhiaj said. “We have zero evidence and zero data that homeowner-occupied units are in compliance with the law. And the reason we don’t have the data is because we’re not collecting it.”
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RELATED: What The Worcester Rental Registry Means For City
At-Large Councilor Moe Bergman, who along with his wife manages rental properties in Worcester through limited liability corporations, said landlords who live in their buildings are not “foolish enough to maintain a property in a dangerous way.” He also said exempting two and three-unit properties would help the city conduct health and safety inspections faster.
Lee Hall, the city’s chief inspector, told councilors she regularly sees owner-occupied properties that are in poor condition.
“My years of experience tell me that I see a lot of deferred maintenance in this city in owner-occupied properties,” she said. Everything from bad experiences with tenants to family disputes prevent homeowner-landlords from making key upgrades, she said.
The rental registry is an expansive law that city officials say will modernize the rental landscape in Worcester. The law requires landlords to register their properties for a fee, and establishes a system for deeper rental inspections. Those inspections are outside the required state 110 inspections, which only require inspectors to view rental property common areas. State law requires 110 inspections for any building with three or more units.
City officials have said a lack of basic information about the number of rental properties and their owners has prevented critical health and safety inspections from taking place. The city’s Department of Inspectional Services mostly relies on tenant complaints to find safety issues — but even those don’t always prevent hazards, like in the case of the Gage Street fire in 2022 that killed four renters. The city doesn’t even have basic contact information, like phone numbers, for many landlords, officials have said.
District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson — chair of the Economic Development Committee, and whose district encompasses the Gage Street building where four renters died — said the changes are a way to reach a compromise between retaining the law and calming landlords surprised by the registry.
“We did not, and let me repeat, we did not weaken anything,” she said. “I believe as leaders in this city, there are times we as councilors need to compromise. And one of those compromises is for the three and under owner-occupied [rentals].”
Councilors voted unanimously twice in 2022 to approve the rental registry ordinance. Councilors will have to vote to approve the new changes again this summer. Tuesday’s vote was technically only to advertise the changes in a public notice.
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