Ventura officials propose the end of garage tenants
Substandard living conditions turn into stricter rental inspections
By Paul Sisolak 08/28/2008
Officials from the City of Ventura’s Building and Safety Department are in the process of assembling a working advisory group of stakeholders to help formulate a proposal hoped to better the local rental housing inspection process.
The department, according to its chief building official, Andrew Stuffler, was directed by the Ventura City Council on July 14 to begin preparation of the document. The proposal will be presented back to the council on Oct. 20.
It is expected to contain guidelines ensuring that apartments and rental units across Ventura are up to standards insofar as safety and code enforcement is concerned.
“Oftentimes occupants are put in some unsanitary or unsafe conditions,” Stuffler said. “Right now, an owner can have a residential dwelling unit on the market, and there’s never a required safety inspection at all.”
There are 15,000 to 20,000 rental units in the city of Ventura. Last year, he said, 30 percent of reported violations to the city’s code enforcement policies — 231 out of 937 complaints — were on account of substandard living conditions.
Those, said Stuffler, may include inadequate sanitation, tenants dwelling in garages not intended for apartment use, and exposure to carbon monoxide poisoning from gas water heaters.
The proposal, if passed, follows adoption of the city’s first property maintenance code in October of last year.
If the legislation musters a majority vote from the council, will stricter enforcement of proper rental housing in Ventura cause the apartment community to dwindle?
“I don’t anticipate there’s going to be a large shift in the availability or cost of rental units initially,” Stuffler said. “Over time, though, as we start to correct the illegal units, either make them legal or return to their prior use, then there
may be an impact — it could be positive, it could be negative, on the availability and price.”
If so, there still is some good news for people with prospects of leasing property: The rental housing market in Ventura County is healthy as can be.
One of the few stabilizing factors in an otherwise unstable consumer market, high occupancy rates and the quick turnaround of apartment housing units regionally indicate that people are still looking to reside in Ventura County in spite of the high cost of, well, just about everything else.
The California Apartment Association (CAA), a statewide rental housing trade group that tracks things such as shifting rental costs and residential transiency, determined at the end of the second quarter for 2008 a 94.1-percent occupancy rate throughout Ventura County. That leaves a near 6-percent vacancy rate, which explains some For Rent signs that never seem to come down.
Eighteen thousand apartment buildings were polled for the information in Ventura County, noted CAA Deputy Director Eric Wiegers.
Tenant occupancy has progressively diminished over the last eight years at about 3 percent, according to CAA data, though it has climbed slightly from last year’s rating of 93.9 percent. Still, Ventura County’s remaining vacancy rate leaves no cause for concern.
“Healthy would be around 4 percent,” said Wiegers. “People coming out, people moving in.”
So, while that means tenants in the coveted Southern California residential universe as we know it shouldn’t hold their breath for a reduction in their rent payments, there have been no substantial increases in those monthly fees, either.
“The rental market in Ventura County is relatively flat over the last year,” said Wiegers. “The trend is really flat. No real uptake in rents.”
For example, noted Wiegers, on average, the rent for a two-bedroom accommodation in Ventura County is “more or less the same as they were this time last year.”
It depends, of course, on the area. According to rental listings this week on Web site CraigsList.org, one could find a one-bedroom unit in one part of Ventura for $695; in another, $2,350 for three bedrooms. In comparison, an entire house in Oxnard was available for $2,100.
Much like the price of oil can be correlated to record high fuel costs, could there be a decisive factor that may cause rental costs to lower themselves in Ventura? There is when considering a shaky real estate situation.
“The only reason I’d suggest prices might come down is, it’s tied to this whole foreclosure mess,” said Wiegers. “There are some markets where some houses being foreclosed upon are being bought by investors and putting them on the rental market.”
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