RENTAL INSPECTIONS ON TAP CITY TO CHECK OUT EVERY PROPERTY IN PALMDALE.

Byline: Jim Skeen  Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Palmdale City Council approved a new program to have every apartment and rental home in the city inspected on a regular basis for health and building-code violations.

On a unanimous vote Monday night, the City Council approved the inspection program, which will be financed by a new fee on all landlords. Rental units would be assessed a registration fee of $9.60 to $48 a year and would be inspected as often as once a year, with rental units found to be in good shape reinspected every three or five years.

``I'm very bullish on this program,'' said Mayor Jim Ledford. ``To get all the units inspected will cause a big change in our community.''

The ordinance will come back before the City Council in February for a second vote. Once the ordinance is enacted, it requires all landlords to register their units within six months, said Shane Walters, the city's director of building and safety.

About 11,900 apartment units and rental homes are believed to be in Palmdale, with rented houses accounting for about 5,200 of those, city officials said. That means about 30 percent of the city's households live in rentals.

Inspecting all the rental units will require hiring at least two more inspectors and a permit technician, and it will take more than three years to get to them all.

After the first inspection, the apartments or homes where no violations are found would be inspected in five years. So will units where the landlord corrects the problems within 30 days and enters the PAC certification program, which includes training classes for managers or landlords.

Rental units with one major violation that is corrected within 30 days would be re-inspected in three years.

Any building with more than one major violation or any violation that takes the landlord more than 30 days to correct would be reinspected in a year.

Landlords would be charged a $48 registration fee at each inspection, so some would be paying $48 every year and others $48 every three or five years.

Palmdale's inspection proposal is described by city officials as an outgrowth of the 13-year-old Partners Against Crime program, which teams city inspectors with sheriff's deputies and other officials to combat crime and unsafe housing conditions, particularly in downtown apartments.

City officials said they believe it is time to augment the PAC efforts and go beyond the city's present practice of inspecting rental units only when a tenant complains.

The regular inspection program and the fees will reduce the instances when the city attorney must seek an inspection warrant from a judge, help shelter tenants from retaliation from landlords angry about complaints, and provide money to pay for it all, city officials said.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com