Brunswick officials are taking a second look at beefing up its rental registry as part of a set of changes that were initially proposed by a tenants-rights group.
Since 2000, the midcoast town has had a registration requirement for owners of buildings with three or more units. There are no fees associated with the registry now, and Brunswick does not have somebody dedicated to tracking the number and conditions of rental properties.
The changes would put Brunswick among a growing number of Maine municipalities to enact a modernized rental registry. Many of those pushes have been spurred by a housing affordability crisis that’s hitting the midcoast hard, with median home prices in the region generally unaffordable to the median household in 2021.
“Currently, there’s a lot of guesswork,” Bronwyn Caswell-Riday, who is on the Brunswick Renters Organization steering committee, said of the existing registry.
In December, the Brunswick Town Council considered a proposal set forth by the renters organization that would have required landlords to register their properties with the town and pay $50 per year, per unit. The money would be used to pay the wages for a staff member who would maintain the database.
But the Town Council tabled the measure in December amid opposition from landlords and sent it back to the town’s Housing Committee. The staff member’s salary would now go through the town budget process, and fees will likely be reduced from the original proposal and tiered by number of units, Abby King, a member of the housing panel, said.
On Thursday, Brunswick is hosting a community workshop for residents to comment on ideas for the registry registry. She said the new version could return to the Town Council by April.
Town Councilor Nathaniel Shed, who voted to table the measure in December, said he wants to see the updated ordinance before deciding how he will vote on it. But his main issue with the first iteration was its proposal to pay for the additional staff member through fees.
“It’s more of a budget philosophy, I guess, of how things are decided and where they belong,” he said.
Both the town’s housing committee and the Brunswick Renters Organization have prioritized the rental registry changes. The tenants-rights group that formed two years ago is part of the Maine Democratic Socialists of America, so it consulted lawyers, professors and others who pushed Portland to establish its own rental registry in 2017.
Registries have been recommended in many places by code enforcement officials who want to better keep up with inspections and make sure tenants are safe. They also provide an easy way for police and fire departments to contact landlords if there are emergencies. Brunswick Fire Chief Kenneth Brillant supported the changes at the December meeting.
The housing crisis has been at the center of more recent efforts in other places. Bangor officials recommended a registry for years. But the city did not take steps toward finalizing one until last year, when it kicked off a two-year program aiming to identify all the rental units in the city.
That was done in part to improve the city’s rental housing by finding out if there are neighborhoods with more vacant or deteriorating buildings that need investment. The Brunswick renters group hopes that the registry will illuminate the town’s issues with affordable housing and bring the community together to solve the problem.
“I have lived in Brunswick for the past 10 years, and I was priced out recently,” Jess Czarnecki, a co-founder of the Brunswick Renters Organization, said. “Now, I’m in Topsham.”