A resolution to start developing stricter rental housing standards and regulation in Laramie was condemned at the Laramie City Council’s most recent regular meeting, which came down to standing room only as a range of ASUW officials and representatives, renters and landlords turned out to express their thoughts.
At the Feb. 19 meeting councilors voted 5-4 against the resolution, which would have tasked council officials to “research, prepare, and recommend rental housing standards” over a period of several months. Mayor Joe Shumway, Vice Mayor Pat Gabriel and councilors Jessica Stalder, Bryan Shuster and Charles Mill cast the decisive “no” votes.
ASUW officials lobbied the previous week on behalf of students’ rights as renters, saying councilors should have dedicated more time to the matter before voting on it and that the meeting’s attendance skewed in favor of property owners.
“I think they’re completely opposed to doing anything while they hide behind the type of property rights arguments to protect their ability to rent substandard housing for their own profit,” Weaver said, expressing his frustration.
John Houghton, ASUW’s director of governmental and community affairs, hoped the council would first consider the issue in a working-session meeting and was caught off guard when it moved to a vote so quickly.
Student senators and officials plan to continue gathering student feedback and forming petitions to raise the matter before the city council again, ASUW President Alex Mulhall said.
“Even if you’re a landlord and you have your own opinions about it you might want this issue explored,” Mulhall said. “It’ll be really important for people to let us know that they’re interested in this so that we can create a statement to city council that says, ‘We don’t know that this was handled the best way, there are a lot of people who think that this deserves its own time to be talked about.’”
Many property owners at meeting took issue with the resolution’s call for licenses and inspections, emphasizing their view that such regulation would be an intrusive burden on landlords. They also felt the guidelines would be costly to enforce and redundant since Wyoming law already sets standards and means of conflict resolution for renters and owners.
Property owner Brett Glass stated that government action could drive away owners who sincerely care about their properties and tenants, giving an account of his own late-night effort to help tenants repair their heater.
“It’s one of the reasons we got into the business, because we wanted to be able to provide better quality rentals,” Glass said. “Please do not penalize us for doing this by suddenly foisting this regulation on us, because the first people who are going to leave the market are not going to be the bad actors — they’re going to be people like us because we’re just so frustrated by the additional burden.”
Laramie resident Amanda Pittman said she sees problems she faced as a renter still happening today, with the same landlord. She felt landlords consistently have negotiating advantages over those seeking to rent housing, and regulations would be an important move to level the field and protect renters’ rights.
“Renters in this city have a wide variety of experiences. Some landlords are fantastic, some landlords are terrible,” Pittman said. “Franky, young folks, young families and poor individuals are going to be the people who are renting as opposed to buying, and they’re the ones who are going to have less power in these situations.”
Attorney Julianne Gern and law intern Kasey Benish of UW Student Legal Services (SLS) sought to address that power gap with a presentation Wednesday in the Classroom Building detailing tenants’ and owners’ rights and obligations. SLS’s primary services include assistance and education on landlord-tenant relationships, with information on this also available on the SLS webpage (UWyo.edu/studentatty).
Holding to Benjamin Franklin’s adage that prevention is the best medicine, Gern and Benish advised students to seek out as much information as they could before signing their name to a lease and to seek changes when possible to troubling clauses. One important clause is the obligation of tenants to stay current on rent, even when owners aren’t meeting their obligations or while tenants seek a redress of grievances.
Councilor Stalder, who voted against the resolution, was present at the information session along with an audience of about 30 students.
“I just wanted to hear more about what students had to say,” Stalder said. “I heard from a lot of landlords the other night.”
Stalder opposed the resolution on the grounds that the best way to achieve solutions to renter/owner issues in Laramie is through private interactions, not government intervention.
“I think that a lot of this needs to be market-driven, rather than regulation-driven,” Stalder said. “What does the market look like for rental housing? You have more nice units on the market, all these low-end units are either going to have to up their game or they’re going to be vacant.”
Stalder referenced apps and services like Yelp and Uber as examples of platforms that inform and empower users while setting a higher bar for institutions that want to attract business and avoid bad reviews. In this case, she said, similar review-based sites could encourage both owners and tenants to make their best effort for mutual benefit.
The council can’t reconsider the issue until one of the no-voting members chooses to reopen it or until after the next election cycle, said Weaver, who sought to postpone the vote until April. The issue is still moving forward independent of city council, however. Houghton of ASUW said an unexpected but promising avenue opened to student government following the failed vote.
“We did have a pretty productive phone call with a property owner who decided to contact me, and he was really interested in sitting down with ASUW,” Houghton said. “So that’s something that we’re really encouraged by.
“He just stated that some other landlords who were present that night at city council thought it would be best to try and look for a solution to this problem that didn’t result directly in a resolution from city council — something on a voluntary basis.”
