Auburn residents pressed City Council on Thursday to make information about rental properties easier to find, saying prospective tenants need a clearer way to check a building’s condition and a landlord’s history before signing a lease.
The requests came during public comment dominated in part by complaints about repairs, condemned properties and the risk of losing housing when a rental becomes unsafe. Council took no action on the proposals.
James Udall urged the city to create a searchable database where renters could enter an address or owner’s name and find available city records, including code and nuisance cases, condemnation status and unpaid property taxes. He said the information may already be public, but finding it requires knowing where to look.
Udall said people had contacted him after learning that properties they were considering renting were condemned. That account was not independently verified during the meeting. He offered to help prospective tenants research properties while pressing the city to make its records easier to search.
Another speaker described months of unsuccessful efforts to get repairs at rental homes and connected poor housing conditions to the threat of homelessness. Andrew Bishop also criticized what he sees as inadequate oversight of problem properties.
The speakers’ accounts raised questions about how renters learn of serious property problems before they move in and how the city follows up when repairs are requested. No property inspection findings or enforcement records were presented to council Thursday, and city officials did not address the allegations during the public session.
Udall also said a Freedom of Information Law request concerning city-held property financial records remained unanswered beyond the response date he had been given. That was his account; the status of the request was not established at the meeting.
The concerns have surfaced before. Residents raised similar questions about rental conditions, displacement and access to landlord information at a September council meeting.
Speakers also urged the city in August to make property and landlord records more accessible.
Thursday’s comments left the proposed database, the complaints about rental conditions and the records request unresolved in public. None appeared as an action item on the council’s agenda.
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