Costa Mesa officials are looking to get a better sense of their rental market by establishing a registry in a city where about 60% of homes are rented.
It comes amid calls for elected officials to get a grip on rising rents and to track evictions in Orange County, with a new push in Anaheim to get a rent control ordinance on this year’s ballot and demands for a rental registry in Costa Mesa amid widespread ICE raids.
[Read: Orange County Cities Grapple With Rising Rents & Tracking Evictions]
At their 6 p.m. meeting Tuesday, Costa Mesa City Council members are expected to debate launching a rental registry to monitor their housing market and develop possible solutions to address challenges between local landlords and their tenants.
They are also looking to expand their tenant protection ordinance to not only track no-fault evictions but also track at-fault evictions contested in court by requiring landlords to report them to the city.
Under those changes, if a landlord fails to alert the city of a contested at-fault eviction within three days of filing a complaint in court, they could face fines.
City staff say a rental registry would allow officials to enforce laws on evictions, rent increase, and property conditions and provide data on eviction trends, rental rates and vacancy rates
“In turn, this data can be used to direct resource allocation to mitigate potentially negative impacts, improve housing stability by ensuring rent increases comply with state and local rent cap regulations, ensure owners are complying with local property standards, and provide the public with a database of vacant units available for rent,” reads a staff report.
At the same time, staff say a registry would put additional burdens on landlords as well as lead to possible lawsuits and increased costs on the city as they eye putting two separate tax increase measures on the ballot.
“Implementation of a Rental Registry may impact property owners, including increased administrative burdens, city oversight of building conditions, increased costs, delay in legal proceedings (i.e., evictions), privacy concerns, reduced rental housing supply, and removal and/or frequent turnover of rental housing,” reads the same staff report.
Activists with Costa Mesa Unidos and Resilience OC are pushing for the registry, arguing the city needs to track at-fault evictions amid widespread deportation raids as reports of residents struggle to pay the rent because they’re afraid to go to work and get caught in the sweeps.
Leaders with the Apartment Association of Orange County say there are other ways to track at-fault evictions by getting information from the courts or the Kennedy Commission and argue that tenants need to pay their rent and follow the rules.
Last fall, city officials directed staff to develop a proposal for a rental registry as well as bring back an update to their tenant protection ordinance to require notices of any eviction to the city.
The direction came after council members donated $100,000 to help support families impacted by immigration sweeps, pay rent and buy food and voted to allocate $200,000 to help get them immigration legal defense services.
[Read: Costa Mesa Inches Closer to an Immigration Legal Defense Fund]
According to a 2021 report by the Southern California Association of Governments, just more than half of the homes in Costa Mesa – 24,987 out of 41,019 homes are renter-occupied.
The median gross rent in Costa Mesa is $2,446 and the median household income is $111,505, according to census data.
A Rental Registry in Costa Mesa
If officials launch a rental registry in Costa Mesa the city would be the second in Orange County to create an online director of rental properties behind Santa Ana – the only town in OC to implement rent control.
Under the proposal in Costa Mesa, officials would hire a software company to launch a rental registry portal online for landlords to plug in their local rental units and the program would be supported by current city staff.
Staff estimates the registry would cost over $321,000 to run annually, with a one-time start up cost of over $213,000. A $19 per unit registration fee on landlords, they say, would eventually offset the annual costs while taxpayer dollars would cover launching the registry.
“The City can expect reduced revenue collection during the initial years of a rental registry program due to the need for early outreach, education, and grace periods prior to enforcement,” reads a staff report.
“As a result,temporary General Fund support may be necessary to cover both operating and one time start-up costs until full compliance is achieved.”
They add that the city probably wouldn’t get full compliance from landlords till the third year meaning officials would need to allocate $374,000 from the general fund to the registry the first year.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org.