[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: International Property Maintenance Code

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Cowles, Macon

I am pasting below the email that Council received from a couple, recounting their recent experience with the housing market in Boulder. Their experience, similar to what we have heard from others, underscores the importance of making compliance with the IPMC mandatory, and backing the requirement up with inspections and fines, where necessary.



Macon Cowles
Boulder City Council Member
1726 Mapleton Ave.
Boulder, Colorado 80304
CowlesM at bouldercolorado.gov
(303) 447-3062
(303) 638-6884


Here is the body of the email:

We are classified as low-income residents of Boulder, even though the CU undergrads we teach pay us enough in their tuition to classify us as above the average household in the nation. As you can imagine, housing is tough for us (consuming 30-50% of our checks at times), despite the fact that we have been supported by such federal agencies as the NSF and NOAA; we have struggled to clear the bills since moving here.

We recently looked for housing in Boulder; the current unit doesn’t get enough light. We began our search with eyes wide open, making careful lists of criteria, discussing budgets, and checking our expectations with reasoned compromises. We were willing to pay our dues, and had made peace with the lack of free lunch. Both of us are veterans of the Boulder rental market and have survived the competitiveness and skyrocketing prices of the rental markets in the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Barbara.  We are going to tell you the story of our recent search because it is insane. That we have had the experiences related in this story makes it likely that this suburb will become increasingly homogenous  (more so than it already is) to the detriment of individuals and the community at large.   

Our basic profile has presented myriad challenges to finding a quality, affordable rental. As PhD candidates we can usually convince landlords to waive the “no-student” policy, but not always, since few have any incentive to treat tenants like human beings.

A number of inquiries for 1 bedroom apartments immediately quoted us at a higher rental rate than advertised when they leaned we are a couple. Now in our later twenties and in a solid relationship, we recently adopted a spayed, adult cat, but since we have not paid the fees nor cynically wanted to take advantage of the loopholes in the ADA, she is not listed as a “support animal.” So landlords with disgusting, almost certainly out of code properties still repeatedly refuse to rent to us and our well-trained, meticulous cat.

When we were able to get a showing, it was 50/50 that the property had not been inspected in decades. Some of the obvious health and safety hazards we saw include: missing ventilation in bathrooms, basement units missing fire alarms, over 100-year old slanted floors on which a skateboard would roll, electrical outlets placed within carpet floors and door trim, windows that don’t open or wouldn’t close, rusted and peeling sinks, unrepaired flood damage, and (and this was our favorite) a windowless bedroom that had a “ceiling” of the floor underneath the house sans insulation of any kind. Indeed, despite our due diligence, our current rental was turned over to us with water leaking out of a wall. The wall was repaired, but the repair delayed us from settling in by about a month at a crucial time in our jobs (e.g., professional conferences, preparing university courses). 

If we were lucky and the potential unit had been built and inspected in the past 40 years, we were in a buying mood. But then the catch would come: the heat is controlled by a unit upstairs; that 2nd bedroom isn’t really a bedroom; the circuit breakers for the whole building are in your unit, and they trip a lot; the laundry room isn’t locked and sometimes homeless people sleep in there, etc. The bottom line is this: Boulder’s rental housing stock is almost unforgivably old and decrepit, to the point where it is like living in a developing country with unreliable and highly inefficient heat and hot water, uninsulated walls, sagging floors, vermin behind the drywall, and broken pipes.

We also had a great unit nailed down once, until the landlord rented it sight unseen to someone less than an hour after we had seen the unit and before we could get back to him. We went through the proper channels to contact the landlord and current tenant for a showing, assuming we would have right of first refusal. We were wrong, apparently, and wasted our time.

In all, we saw an average of 4 units per week for 8 weeks; this iceberg-tip represents over 100 unique housing inquiries. How anyone with income challenges is supposed to be able to devote that much time to a housing search is beyond us.

When we finally found the unit we just signed a lease for (taking our Valentines Day to do it, such was our rush to seal the deal), we ended up spending $1325/mo for a small 1 bedroom with a great location. We are looking forward to downsizing our already modest possessions; after all we don’t need much more than our research library, computers, and a warm place to sleep. The sunshine and the privilege of keeping our cat will be great for our mental health. The deposit is an arm and a leg (more than the Prius my partner
 is about to sell is worth), and utilities always seem to be $100/month, no matter what you do. The unit has coin-operated laundry as well, so we’re paying more on that end as well. The landlord is a private owner and is upgrading the property to be a mid-range rental unit for grad students and younger professionals, so at least we know we’ll have nice amenities that last year when we can’t afford the next year’s increase to $1450.

What this suburb needs is higher density housing like the building we are moving into, where 8-12 people can live comfortably; enough of that housing to drop the price of it by 30%. Either that or you need to provide housing vouchers in combination with rent control in great quantity and amount. There also needs to be a comprehensive renewal and revival in rental inspection and code enforcement - modifications to the code to favor human health, safety, and flourishing would be appropriate as well.

And high-density doesn’t mean high-rise, so you can have your view of NCAR all you want if you ease up on the "unrelated individuals” requirement and make sure red tape is minimized. Indeed, housing co-ops are one of the strengths in this community. One of us lived in a Boulder Housing Coalition co-op for some years and the model provides key members of the community with an excellent platform to continue improving Boulder. It doesn’t destroy neighborhoods to have more neighbors; what destroys neighborhoods is when people with resources stop investing them (see also: University Hill).

Just remember that without students and young people - graduate students and college grads in particular - Boulder won’t have the comparative advantage it has in the past when it comes to its local talent pool. That pool will shift to Denver; most of our friends have moved to the greater Denver metro area for cheaper rents and less homogenous potential mates and to avoid mental illnesses. And businesses looking to start will look to Denver for cheaper rents for their employees and more talent. The neighborhoods that
 anti-density advocates fear will fall apart, are already falling apart, they’re merely afraid of not controlling the downfall. We know of plenty of young people, college-educated (often with advanced degrees), some with babies on the way, some post-doctoral fellows with spouses also earning income that are giving up on Boulder because Boulder has given up on them. 

We aren’t ready to give up on Boulder yet. It is on the short list of places we would settle down. But that is increasingly impossible, even if we graduate and find work close enough that pays in the top 80th percentile nationally (or top 50% locally). In sum, to raise children in the middle class in this suburb may require flexible, subsidized, cooperative housing arrangements to release the burden on child care, food, transportation, and housing/utility costs faced by young families.