Galesburg Alderman had on first reading Monday night a new rental inspection program along with updates to minimum housing standards.The new rental program does things like trade in rental registrations for licenses and adds an inspection classification system which will help determine how often properties are inspected.
It also guarantees every rental unit is self inspected or inspected by the city at least every five years.
City Manager Todd Thompson says landlords who have uncorrected violations won’t qualify for self inspection.
“It might take a little bit of time but we’re going to sift out the good people, they’re going to receive less attention and we’ll sift out the people who are problematic, they’re probably going to get a city inspection every year,” Thompson says.
Alderman Jeremy Karlin had a number of issues with the way the standards are to be implemented.
He, in part, says that self inspections should be done on all rental properties every year as a part of lease renewal and says it would be a protection for both tenants and landlords.
Russell Fleming on the other hand says the standards go too far and some of them amount to “babysitting”.
Karlin replied that the free market can’t be relied on to provide quality housing to individuals at a fair price.
“I submit to you that experiment has happened and failed in the city of Galesburg in many respects,” Karlin says.
Both the rental inspection program and minimum housing standards are expected to be on final reading in two weeks.
