The Merced City Council plans to revise code enforcement’s rental unit inspection procedure – again – after receiving a warning from the California Attorney General’s Office that the city’s current policy doesn’t comply with state law.
The council took the issue up for a second time Monday night and unanimously voted to rescind its March 16 resolution, or the Inspection Procedures For Multi-Unit Substandard Buildings Policy, and discuss it again in July.
The resolution aimed to update the city’s code enforcement program to comply with new state laws established in 2022 and 2023.
One of the new laws, AB 548, calls for specific requirements for inspecting substandard multi-unit housing. That means the city’s policy must provide code enforcement officers with updated protocols when responding to complaints about substandard conditions at multi-unit rental housing.
The inspection policy should outline a mandatory inspection and re-inspection process for code enforcement officers after a complaint is filed and a violation is identified in one unit of a multi-unit building, according to the letter from the Attorney General’s Office.
The council’s work tackling code enforcement procedures comes at a time when city officials also are drafting a policy targeting slumlords, or repeat housing code violators.
The item on code enforcement inspection procedures will return for an additional discussion within 60 days. Councilmembers Mike Harris, Shane Smith and Fue Xiong plan to work with City Attorney Craig J. Cornwell to rewrite the resolution.
AG sends warning letter to Merced
Two weeks after the council updated its code enforcement inspection policy, the Attorney General’s Office issued Merced city officials a formal warning.
Ashley Werner, an attorney with the California Attorney General Office’s Bureau of Environmental Justice addressed her March 30 letter to City Attorney Cornwell and copied all council members. It was a response to Cornwell’s request for feedback on the council’s updated inspection policy and anti-slumlord ordinance draft, both discussed at the March 16 council meeting.
The warning letter said the city’s code enforcement inspection program is not on par with state law.
The letter identifies three core functions the council’s policy fails to address, which consequently means the city isn’t aligning with AB 548.
For one, the resolution’s language is vague, the letter says.
Instead of outlining specific criteria, for example, the policy directs inspectors to identify substandard housing conditions at their discretion using a “non-exhaustive” list, including four violation types – mold, mildew, pests and/or lead hazards. Code enforcement officers should use the criteria to provide the documentation necessary to determine if an entire building in a multi-unit rental property requires inspection.
Second, Merced’s policy language does not require an officer to issue a notice to repair or abate a violation after an inspection is completed.
Lastly, the resolution does not provide clear inspection or re-inspection timelines.
“Even if this policy satisfied the requirements of the Health and Safety Code, it appears to be more of a high-level goal than a policy because of its extremely broad and ambiguous language,” Werner writes.
The letter cited research showing children in south Merced neighborhoods face disproportionate exposure to lead-based contaminants. It also included statistics comparing elevated blood lead levels in children in south Merced compared to other census tracts across the country.
“The city is home to several neighborhoods that are among the most greatly impacted by housing-related lead hazards in California,” the letter states.
Ashley Marie Suarez, housing and land use policy advocate with Leadership Counsel For Justice and Accountability, raised similar concerns during public comment at the March 16 meeting.
She cautioned that Merced’s code enforcement program did not comply with California’s updated health and safety code and urged the council to collect more community feedback before voting on the policy.
City officials at odds with advocates and tenants on solutions
District 1 Councilmember Darin DuPont told The Merced FOCUS council members should not have been copied in the communication between attorneys, citing professional rules and responsibilities for attorneys.
“It’s a little concerning,” DuPont said on the dais. He was the only public official , besides City Attorney Cornwell, who addressed the letter openly during Monday’s council meeting.
DuPont also brought up Werner’s previous employment with the nonprofit organization Leadership Counsel For Justice and Accountability.
“Not only is that, what I believe…a conflict of interest, it’s hugely concerning coming from the Attorney General’s Office,” DuPont said.
The FOCUS reached out to Werner for a response to DuPont’s comment, but theAttorney General’s Office did not respond before publication.
Xiong told The FOCUS he had not read the14-page letter, but he said he disagreed with DuPont.
“If there (are) any legal issues with (the policy), we should be aware of it,” Xiong said. “…Just because it’s CC’d to us, doesn’t mean that we’re making any legal determination on the letter, but we should at least know.”
Tenants who spoke during public comment on Monday night and at the March 16 council meeting highlighted substandard conditions in their rental units and asked for stronger protections.
Cornwell told The FOCUS he believes city officials, advocates and renters would all agree there’s a high need for legal representation for tenants who enter into a contractual relationship with landlords.
The issue, Cornwell said, is not how he writes a sentence in an internal policy, which he said was the focus of the discussion Monday night. Rather, the attention should be on problem-solving the “void” of legal representation for tenants.
“…When you try to tell this tenant, what you need to do for relief is come to a public meeting and critique a policy, the real issue is avoided,” he said.
Suarez, the housing policy advocate with Leadership Counsel, on the other hand, said city officials have an obligation to protect renters living in substandard housing through effective policy.
“The city can and must do everything in its power to protect the health and wellbeing of tenants by ensuring the policy has stronger protections, effective notices, and prompt re-inspections,” Suarez told The FOCUS in an email statement.
