Pittsburgh City Council renews push for rental registration, inspections

Pittsburgh City Council has reintroduced a proposal to create a rental registration and inspection schedule for the city’s rental units, a measure that was stopped by a judge when officials previously tried to implement it.

The proposal, advanced unanimously by council, would allow the city to identify all of Pittsburgh’s rental properties and subject them to inspections, an effort meant to ensure renters in the city have safe living conditions, council members said.

“We have discovered thousands and thousands of units that are out of compliance and almost unlivable,” Councilwoman Deb Gross said.

But with no rental registry to know where there are rental units and no inspection schedule to ensure they’re up to code, the city has no way to “guarantee living standards,” she said.

Council members said that’s what they hope to accomplish through the proposed legislation, which was advanced Wednesday. Similar systems are in place in other municipalities in Allegheny County and elsewhere in Pennsylvania, Gross said.

“We need to know where all those units are. We need to put them on an inspection schedule,” she said. “It’s a public health issue.”

City Council, with the backing of Mayor Bill Peduto’s office, had previously attempted to enact such a measure, but it was blocked by a lawsuit challenging the associated fees.

A judge ruled that the city could not enforce such an ordinance until it implements a “fee that is fair, reasonable and not grossly disproportionate to the cost of maintaining the program.”

The fee structure found to be unfair included a rental registration permit fee of $65 per unit for up to 10 housing units, $55 per unit for 11 to 100 units and $45 per unit for more than 100 units.

Under the revamped legislation, those costs drop to a $16 application fee, plus a $5.50 charge for an inspector to come to the property and a charge of $14 per unit.

Units that pass inspection would be able to renew their rental registration permit at half price and would need to have their units reinspected once every five years, under the proposal. Rental units that don’t pass inspection would be inspected at the discretion of the Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections until they pass inspection.

Affordable housing properties will be exempt from the annual rental registration permit fee.