Some landlords are passing city's fee on to tenants.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Eugene is financing its new rental housing law with a $10 annual fee for each rental unit in the city. Landlords, in some cases, are promptly passing the fee on to tenants - with an additional handling charge - prompting protests from renters.

"We're all struggling to make ends meet as it is," said Constance Smith, 62, a resident of the Maple Manor Apartments, low-income housing units on Roosevelt Boulevard.

Smith, who rents from Umbrella Properties, recently received a letter from the property management company asking her to pay $12 - the $10 per unit annual assessment for the housing code plus a $2 administrative fee added by Umbrella.

She paid it, reluctantly. The amount may seem trivial, Smith said, but it just about wipes out the cost of living allowance she expects in Social Security and disability payments in January.

"There's many, many seniors who struggle with prescriptions and on and on," she said. "Twelve dollars is a lot to seniors because it takes away from our food supply."

Umbrella's owner, Chuck Shepard, said that he believes the ordinance is unnecessary and unfair to rental owners, and that he wanted to make a point by passing the cost to his more than 500 tenants who pay their rent monthly.

"We're trying to have people understand that when you increase costs on a landlord, it eventually goes to the tenant," Shepard said. He said that he doesn't believe that the city councilors who approved the rental housing ordinance a year ago fully considered that.

"We wanted to make it painfully obvious to everyone that that's what happened," he said. "Every tenant is having to pay for the few bad landlords. That doesn't seem fair to me."

Max Liebreich, who owns the Country Club Manor apartments on Cal Young Road, also asked his 40 tenants there, who are 55 and older, to pay the $10 city fee plus a $1 administrative fee.

Liebreich said that the ordinance benefits tenants, not landlords, so renters should pay for it. "It's an insurance policy for the tenants," he said.

Landlords generally take care of the problems the city law covers, Liebreich added. "Most people are responsible," he said. "Now everybody is going to pay for the irresponsible ones."

Some of his tenants live in government-subsidized rental units and Liebreich said that he can't raise their rents to cover additional costs.

Trent Spradling of Eugene said that elderly residents such as his mother, who is 87 and lives at Country Club Manor, also should not be charged the fee.

"In this building, some of the elderly people are up in arms," Spradling said. "They live on fixed incomes, and it's difficult to pay any additional amount."

The city has declined to get involved in the dispute, saying it's a matter for state landlord-tenant law.

The city sent bills last month to more than 5,400 owners of more than 30,500 rental units in the city, said Rachelle Nicholas, code enforcement supervisor. The city previously estimated that there are 36,000 to 38,000 rental units.

The revenue from the $10 per unit fee is expected to cover startup costs for the rental housing program and to pay for hiring an additional city inspector to investigate complaints.

The Lane County Rental Owners Association, representing 800 landlords and 3,500 rental units in Eugene, urged the City Council to reject the proposal last year. Among other things, the group said, the ordinance duplicates state law.

Jim Straub, vice president of the association and the owner of 48 rental units, said that some landlords may be passing on the new $10 fee to tenants, but he's not. "The rents are what the market will bear, period," he said.

As for sending tenants a separate bill, "I think it's more trouble than it's worth," Straub said.

Proponents who helped draft the ordinance last year researched more than 75 similar rental housing laws across the country. They modeled the Eugene ordinance on one that began in 2002 in Corvallis, in part because the program fee is small and ensures dedicated funding, said Brett Rowlett, a University of Oregon campus organizer for the Oregon Student Association.

"We wanted to make sure a program important to protect living conditions in Eugene would not be eliminated in the future due to budget considerations," Rowlett said.

Supporters of the law said that they hope that landlords don't make their tenants pay the fee. But even if they do, $10 per year isn't unreasonable, Rowlett said.

"That fee is well worth it to guarantee everyone in our city has a safe place to live," he said.

But Smith, the Maple Manor tenant, said that she doesn't feel the fee or the program it supports are warranted. Umbrella always has responded to her maintenance needs promptly, she said.

"They are right on top of everything that happens," Smith said.

- Scott Maben