“Stuff goes fast in Ithaca. It’s crazy and really competitive and very expensive,” said Joey Kwasinki, a long-term, student tenant of Hudson Heights Studio Apartments on Coddington road, in a conversation about the difficulties of renting in the city. “It’s like 950 a month [for me], and then there’s sort of addons, like a monthly charge for a pet.”
Housing has long been a pressing topic in Ithaca, whether it concerns the nationally rising price of apartments or homelessness, and continues to sit at the forefront of Common Council discussions. Between the months of January and March, the council has been debating a revised fee structure for housing inspections. Though they passed the legislation March 5 in order to release information on OpenGov, Ithaca’s municipal administration portal, the talking is far from over.
According to Director of Code Enforcement, Rob Fell-DeWalt, all of the council’s expenses concerning inspections have been historically covered “well and above,” but council members aren’t as sure.
“We don’t have enough money to do what we want to do and what we need to do,” said Alderperson Margaret Fabrizio in the special topics meeting. “We are still a very cash-strapped city, and we need to be able to recoup the cost that we spend on providing services like [housing inspections].”
Inspections as tax
Housing inspections include apartments, family homes and college dorm rooms. It only costs $1.17 per dorm room inspection while the cost for a single unit — which may be of similar size and make as a dorm room, a council member argued — ranges from $37.50 to $7. The more units an individual or company owns, the less the inspection costs.
“Most of the smaller unit buildings in our city are older housing stock and larger buildings are owned by larger property owners,” said Alderperson Patrick Kuehl, including companies as well as colleges. In the past, Cornell has been accused of not contributing enough to Ithaca. Members of the common council are also interested in alternative ways of taxing the college — potentially through housing inspections.
Inspections not required
However, housing inspections are not mandatory in the U.S. The fourth amendment prevents inspectors from entering properties or conducting “unreasonable searches.” The inspection price is meant to encourage and not dissuade certifications of compliance.
“In Ithaca, where renting is competitive as it is, [uncertified units] are not going to stop anyone from getting a place to live if they need a place to live,” said Kwasnicki, who can neither confirm nor deny if their unit has recently passed an inspection.
Heating is a requirement of inspections, and for Kwasnicki, the heaters have been inconsistent. After being told it was a boiler issue, “I came back to my apartment and there was a space heater. I texted the building manager … and he said, ‘Oh, the thermostat’s been broken,’ and I was like, I just got a completely different story fifteen minutes ago. … I used the space heater for three or four weeks until it got cold again, like 12 degrees. … I put in another maintenance request and I came home to — can you believe it, another space heater!”
Currently, the common council has yet to thread the fine line between raising prices to cover costs and encouraging inspections. They will continue to discuss a better structure over the coming months.
“A blanket solution, I feel, is never an actual solution for everyone involved,” said Kwasnicki. “They need safety inspections, if nothing else, to fix the safety issues that already need to be inspected.”
