The Brunswick Town Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to enact an update to the town’s ordinance that would track the owner and property manager contact information for rental properties.
Since 2000, the midcoast town has had a registration requirement for owners of buildings with three or more units. No fees were associated with the registry, and Brunswick does not have somebody dedicated to tracking the number and condition of rental properties. But with the ordinance change, the town will now require the registration of all rental properties and enact fines for noncompliance.
The recently approved changes put Brunswick among a growing number of Maine municipalities to enact a modernized rental registry. Many of those pushes have been spurred by a housing affordability crisis that’s hitting the midcoast hard, with median home prices in the region generally unaffordable to the median-income household in 2021.
The registry before the council on Tuesday included changes that would require the disclosure of managers and owners of properties and impose a $50 fine on landlords for each unregistered unit. If a landlord fails to register a unit within 30 days, the fee will double until it reaches a maximum of $400 per unit.
The purpose, according to the ordinance, is to understand the housing stock, improve safety and emergency response and “enhance tenant and landlord protections.” At Tuesday’s meeting Councilor Nathan MacDonald said that out of the 683 buildings that house around 3,000 rental units in the town, only about 100 have been inspected by the fire department. The fire department has the contact information for only 40 owners.
The amendments to the registry were proposed by a newly founded tenants’ union, the Brunswick Renters Organization, last year. The initial proposal would have required landlords to register their properties with the town and pay $50 per year, per unit. The money would have been used to pay the wages for a staff member who would maintain the database. The proposal would have also taken down landlords’ and property owners’ contact information so the fire department could contact someone in the case of an emergency.
However, the initial proposal was tabled in December and sent back to the Housing Committee amid opposition from landlords. The ordinance no longer requires a registration fee.
Members of the Brunswick Renters Organization said they’re glad that the ordinance passed, but they hope in the future it may have “more teeth,” referring to the registration fee and rental price information that was cut out of the ordinance. They’re also worried that since the registration fee was cut, there won’t be enough funding for an additional employee at the fire department to manage the registry.
“A lot of the stuff we wanted to see on it, regarding fees and publicly available information, has kind of been stripped,” said Caleb Braddick, a member of the Brunswick Renters Organization. “But I think this is really good, it’s a really solid foundation to work with, and for now, BRO gets to focus on other things, hopefully.”
At public comment, six people spoke, with one member of the Brunswick Renters Organization speaking in favor of the registry, and five people, who were landlords, requesting amendments and changes to the ordinance.
Robert Poole, a landlord from Harpswell who owns rental properties in Brunswick, asked if the contact information would be private. He also asked if the penalty fee would be applicable if landlords fail to validate updated information annually.
“What I am concerned about is the applicability of the penalty fees to that annual validation, if there have been no material changes or no changes of ownership or contact, we should not be subject to penalty fees where we are otherwise compliant,” Poole said.
Fire Department Deputy Chief Josh Shean clarified that if landlords’ contact and rental information have not changed, they will not be penalized if they do not update the registry. Sally Costello, the town’s director of economic and community development, said the town is still considering what information will be private and not subject to the Freedom of Access Act, and which information would be public. She added that the town will consult with its lawyer regarding the private and public information.
The new registry will go into effect in August.
