City Hall Turns Its Attention to Rental Units

With more than 1,500 landlords in Lakewood, city hall is turning its attention to maintaining the rentals properties in the city.

Part of the equation in dealing with the city’s aging housing stock is staying on top of the city’s landlords, said Dru Siley, the city’s director of planning and development. 

There are 32,000 housing units in Lakewood.

More than half of them are rentals — 17,280 to be exact.

Through analysis of the , city officials learned that many Lakewood landlords own more than property.

Those are the ones in trouble. 

“For the most part, of those 1,500 landlords, most of those folks own one, maybe two properties,” Siley said. “There are some who own groups of properties and all of those properties are in some form of distress. They have nuisance declarations on them; those owners are visiting court more frequently.”

Last year, the city began handing out landlord manuals, and . More than half of the city’s 1,500 landlords have attended the sessions.

There are three more scheduled this year.

“We’ve already been through our Class A and Class B landlords who showed up right away,” Siley said. “I think we’re getting into the more challenged group. We’ll see what kind of response we get.”

The city recently finished its . City officials remain optimistic.

“Overall, our quality of housing is very good — 85 percent,” he said. “That still means 15 percent of that housing is challenged. We want to make sure that all housing, at the very least, is decent, safe and sanitary.”

"That’s a minimum.”

New licensing requirements by the city, seek to ensure that landlords meet two of three criteria by the city: ; attend ; or have a written lease.

“Our goal is to get every landlord into our world,” Mayor Michael Summers . “We want them to make money so they can improve their house. If you don’t want to do that, then we’re going to be having another conversation.”