Apartment Occupancy Limit Sought
The Glendale City Council, seeking another tool to curtail the city’s population growth and parking problems, took a step Tuesday toward limiting the number of people who can live in one apartment.
The council told city staff members to meet with real estate industry leaders and return with an ordinance that would restrict the number of people who could live in an apartment, according to its square footage. The staff was asked to bring back a proposal detailing the number of people who would be allowed in each unit.
City Atty. Scott H. Howard said the city has legal grounds to impose such limits. But he warned that enforcement may be tricky. “We would become something of a mattress police, if you will,” he said.
Council members have been reviewing several ways to slow Glendale’s population boom and on-street parking problems, both created in part by a flurry of apartment and condominium construction. The council has been discussing citywide zoning revisions to reduce the number of new housing units, and an overnight on-street parking ban.
Mayor Larry Zarian had asked the city staff to study apartment occupancy limits as another way to curb population growth. “We shouldn’t allow landlords to stuff people into a place,” he said Tuesday.
There are no legal roadblocks to adopting such limits, Howard said.
“It is our opinion that the city can appropriately regulate the number of people occupying a dwelling unit based upon the square footage thereof,” he said in a written report to the council.
He said the city can cite safety or land-use concerns, including preservation of neighborhood values and the increased air pollution that more residents and their cars would create.
But Howard said in his report that enforcement by police or municipal code enforcement officers “would be extremely difficult if not next to impossible. The determination of who was ‘residing’ in a location as opposed to temporarily visiting would be an arduous task.”
Howard said the city could shift the enforcement burden to landlords by requiring them to register each apartment annually and provide information regarding the number of people allowed to reside in it, according to the lease. He said landlords could be fined or otherwise penalized for knowingly allowing too many people to live in an apartment.
City Manager David H. Ramsay said the city could review an apartment’s occupancy through annual inspections or whenever there is a new tenant.
Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg suggested that the city work with real estate leaders to draft a model lease with uniform occupancy rules that would be easier to enforce.
Councilman Carl Raggio asked the staff to determine whether apartment owners can be forced to pay a bond from which the city could deduct fines if overcrowding occurs.
Council members told Ramsay to return with a proposed ordinance that would justify specific occupancy limits and outline the method of enforcement. No deadline for submitting the proposal was set.
Holly Azzari, president of the nonprofit Fair Housing Council of the San Fernando Valley, said Wednesday that her organization does not object in principle to apartment occupancy limits, if they are applied in an evenhanded way. But she said her organization will be concerned if such a law is used to keep certain tenants out.
“We would certainly be interested if there was discrimination under the ruse of this ordinance,” she said. “And that has happened.”
Azzari said landlords bear varying levels of responsibility for overcrowding.
“Landlords are sometimes very innocent,” she said. “They rent to a few people and more people will move in.”
But in some cases, she said, the building manager simply seeks more rent for extra tenants. “Landlords are sometimes doing it for greed,” she said.
Whatever the reason for overcrowding, she said, occupancy limits are extremely difficult to enforce because a tenant usually says the extra people are just visiting.
Although he said he was pleased with the move toward occupancy limits, Zarian said, “This is probably not going to be a cure-all.”
Councilman Jerold Milner agreed that slowing Glendale’s growth will require more than apartment occupancy limits. “This is not going to solve the problem,” he said. “We have to deal with the parking, and we have to deal with the downzoning.”
