The city of Tulsa started proactively inspecting housing last month, and with an updated ordinance, it’s going to continue.
On Wednesday, the Tulsa City Council unanimously approved updated language to the city’s property maintenance code. The updated language lets code officials require landlords with violations to consult an architect, makes the city respond to housing emergencies within the hour and articulates the city’s rental occupancy standards in plain language.
The update was prompted by the closure of Vista Shadow Mountain, which displaced about 100 residents. Before the closure, some of the tenants lived in units without enclosed walls. Councilor Lori Decter Wright said some tenants paid market rent of $1,400 a month at the apartment complex.
State Rep. Melissa Provenzano said the incident was an anomaly, but that it needed to be addressed. Provenzano said the rental properties people complain to her about often have out-of-state ownership, including Vista.
"Routine inspections of rental units seems like a common-sense approach to making sure tenants are taken care of, and plain-language understanding of their rights as a tenant makes good business sense," she said.
Tulsa Real Estate Investor Association President Kathy Portley said she’s heard complaints that the inspectors are being overzealous since taking the new approach. Councilor Phil Lakin told Portley that council would take her concerns into consideration to improve the ordinance over time.
"No ordinance ever created by any political body, anywhere, ever, is perfect. And so we'll find the imperfections in this, and hopefully, we didn't go too far. But hopefully, we went absolutely far enough so that our residents don't experience the things that they had to experience at Vista Shadow Mountain and some other places, without negatively impacting the 90-plus percent of landlords that are doing things right," he said.
Councilor Lori Decter Wright, who proposed the ordinance with Lakin and two other councilors, said it means the city doesn’t have to wait on complaints from vulnerable residents.
"Those people are not protected from complaining about black mold, from complaining about screens not being on their windows, from complaining about just those basic things that they’re legally required to have when they’re signing a lease,"
The amended ordinance went into effect immediately upon its passage.
