Red Oak council to discussing rental codes

 RED OAK — Building codes for rental properties may be in the City’s near future after a public meeting May 20 discussing Red Oak’s housing stock. 

The meeting was the culmination of a Southwest Iowa Planning Council (SWIPCO) study of the City’s available housing in an effort to improve conditions and assist in applying for future housing rehabilitation grants. 

Currently, the City has no enforceable building codes for rental properties, which City Administrator Brad Wright said could be important in improving the quality of Red Oak’s housing. 

“Anything we look at, we are doing with common sense,” Wright said in regards to codes. “We just want minimum standards for housing, and this applies for rental and owner occupied properties.”

SWIPCO Executive Director John McCurdy said with rental properties occupying almost 35 percent of the available housing in the City, compared to only 25 percent in neighboring county cities, housing discussions in Red Oak tend to focus on rentals.  

“It was a basic consensus that one thing that would benefit Red Oak is code enforcement,” McCurdy said. “The disagreement was in regards to what extent.” 

In owner-occupied homes, McCurdy said potential codes would likely only require inspections when buying and sell ing or if a major expansion is being done. 

Inspections with rental properties though, are where a lot of the conversation centered with the 20-some attendants at the public meeting two weeks ago. 

“With rental properties, inspection costs would fall on the landlords, which was a concern,” McCurdy said. “Ultimately, though, that costs would go to the renter in the form of higher rent, but higher rent might not be a bad thing.” 

McCurdy said the housing study will be completed this month and presented to the City Council likely at the June 16 meeting, at which time the possibility of adding building codes to the City ordinance will be discussed. 

“This isn’t going to happen overnight,” Wright said. “I expect to see something go before the council within the month, and it’s ultimately up to them, but I think it’s relatively likely we’ll see some type of ordinance change in the next three-four months.” 

Wright said he was unsure what exactly building codes would require.

Aside from discussing the potential of code enforcement at the May 20 meeting, McCurdy highlighted some of the key results from the SWIPCO study. 

The study, which SWIPCO began earlier this year, included a housing condition and renter survey. 

According to McCurdy, of the 2,506 housing units that were examined, on the exterior only, 102 or 4.1 percent were deteriorated/dilapidated. An additional 716, or 28.6 percent, were in need of major rehabilitation.

The renter survey, which was sent to 490 people and completed by 85, indicated more than half of renters in Red Oak have lived at their current address for two years or less, and 8.5 percent rated their housing situation as poor.

McCurdy said SWIPCO was approached to do the housing study by the City in December in order to get a clearer picture of the housing stock quality for the purpose of possibly developing building codes and assisting in housing rehabilitation grants.

Despite SWIPCO’s assistance, the City was recently denied a $370,000 Community Development Block Grant for housing rehabilitation; the City has unsuccessfully applied for this grant the last several years. 

The grant would have gone toward the rehabilitation of 10 homes in a target area of Red Oak.

Wright and McCurdy recently met with members of the CDBG committee to discuss why Red Oak was denied. Wright said there were several small portions of the City’s application in which points were lost, including the impact the grant would have on the community. 

According to Wright, the committee said the target area was too large, despite being reduced from past applications, meaning the ratio of homes to be rehabilitated was too small compared to the number of homes in the area. However, Wright said reducing the target area would make it harder to find enough homes to qualify for the projects. 

“It’s definitely a challenging process, but we had a good conversation,” Wright said. “If anything, we just brought to their attention how passionate Red Oak is about improving our housing, and we are going to apply again in December and hope for the best.”