Landlord Licensing: helps a city know it’s housing stock and improve neighborhoods

Landlord Licensing: All businesses are must have a license, except for landlords. Investors can go into a community, buy up homes in bulk and change the character of a neighborhood from an owner-occupied community to renter occupied. Cities can have some control over this by requiring that any home that is rented be licensed. Additional rental conversion fees can also be used (like in Minneapolis). This can be coupled with notifications to the neighborhood when a home is moved from owner occupied to rental. This policy gives cities a tool to enforce codes, deal with problem properties, add money to affordable housing trusts and have an idea of their housing stock. Cities like Irvine, CA have set goals to make 10% of thier housing stock affordable. How can you set goals if you don’t know what you have? An article from Shelterforce Magazine gives a long list of incentives for landlords to do this tells how this has been successfully been done in cities. See: http://www.shelterforce.org/article/2071/the_great_american_fire_sale/P2/ I love to know what you think of this idea and if you know of other cities where this has been implimented and is working well.